LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Shelf^ 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






.4 






j> 



God Reigns 


LAY SERMONS 


BY 


Edward Reynolds Roe, M. D. 


7 /V-^w:^ r 

CHICAGO 


LAIRD & LEE Publishers 


Clark and Adams Streets 



/ 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 

1888, hy LAIRD df LEE, in the Office of the 

Librarian of Congress^ at Washington, 



God Reigns 



SERMON I. 

" In the beginning God created the heavens 
and the earth." — Genesis i: i. 

This all-comprehensive announcement is 
concerning GOD : not a God, not some God, 
not even the God ; and not any anthropomor- 
phized deification of man. God is without 
person (except as a human conception), with- 
out gender, number or tense, the same yester- 
day, to-day and forever. How, then, can we 
by searching find out God ? Granted, that we 
cannot : a mouse in his nest at the base cannot 
find out a mountain ; but in his narrow house 
he may learn of that which is nearest in his 
circumscribed horizon and know that there is 
a mountain. We cannot by searching find out 
anything in its ultimate essence. We know 
something of electricity, of gravity, of life, of 



GOD REIGNS 



consciousness, of emotion ; but we know none 
of them in their ultimate. We know some- 
thing of the starry heavens ; we search them 
with wonderful optical devices, and where 
these fail we penetrate still farther by the 
spectroscope and the photograph 3 and yet 
while 

On forever will the thought pursue, 
The stars extend beyond forever too. 

In a degree almost infinitely less than our 
knowledge of all those and countless other 
systems, may we not know God? Let us 
inquire : 

I. As to the existence of God. — 
Nowhere in the writings of Moses, or in the 
New Testament, is any direct attempt made 
to prove the existence of God ; that is and 
must be assumed as the basis of all reasoning. 
The God-sentiment, feeling the existence of 
God, has probably been common, in greater 
or less degree of crudity and grossness among 
all peoples. And all have agreed at least in 
this : that each has clothed his idol in his own 
human attributes; and their gods are cruel, 
vengeful, jealous, dishonest, or loving, bene- 
ficent, forgiving and fatherly, after the model 



GOD REIGNS 



of their own natures. Some, however, have 
denied the existence of God ; but it is the God 
of others they deny, while themselves deify 
Nature, or Law, or even Chance. But the 
God-sentiment toward the great controlling 
and unifying Harmony of the universe remains, 
even with them who have expelled God from 
their reason. 

The existence of God, then, is assumed, and 
is admitted to be in the nature of things as 
incapable of proof as is that of the universe. 
Berkeley, and many other philosophers before 
him and since, and many of them in a more 
absolute manner than he, have denied the 
existence of matter ; but whether objectively 
in itself or subjectively in ourselves only, 
matter exists to all men. Let it be only in 
the foci of forces, or existent in substantial 
atoms, men will continue to believe in its 
existence though they continue to dispute as 
to its essence. So of the existence and attri- 
butes of God. 

2. Of God's Infinity. — 

It is granted that we can have no compre- 
hension of infinity, but we may think of that 
which we cannot comprehend. We may think 



GOD REIGNS 



of illimitable space : we cannot comprehend 
it ; though from the nature of the human 
mind we cannot feel otherwise than that space 
must be infinite. Indeed, space is nothing, 
and cannot be limited or bounded. We may 
think of inimitable time, but we cannot com- 
prehend it, for time in itself, like space, is noth- 
ing. But as our mental organization offers us 
the conception of duration, we may think of 
its unending continuance. In the same man- 
ner, we must come to have a conception — 
not a comprehension — of the infinity of God. 

3. Of God's Personality. — 

To deny the personality of God is admitted 
heterodox}^ But what is personality ? Does 
not the answer depend on the degree of 
mental culture in him who answers ? To 
think of God as having characteristics of per- 
sonality is to endow the conception with form 
and bounding limits, as of a man. But that 
IS surely a very crude conception, wholly 
incompatible with that of an infinite God, 
without limit and everywhere present ; and it 
may well be questioned whether any who have 
thought deeply on these things have really any 
such conception as that. 



GOD REIGNS 



But there is a sense in which the personaHty 
of God may reasonably be conceived, just as 
the child personifiies Santa Claus, or as men 
personify Hamlet, Othello, or other creations 
of genius. 

But the personification of God becomes less 
definite and personal as men rise in their con- 
ception of his character, until all thought of 
outline and form disappear, and God appears 
as the All-in-all of the universe. 

At this point a very curious question arises: 
May there be more than one universe ? Space 
being illimitable, there is room for any number 
of universes, not interfering with and totally 
disconnected with each other. In the visible 
universe, as we are told by astronomers, there 
are indications of a region which is central as 
to the suns and systems reached by our tele- 
scopes j is there also a circumference as well 
as a center ? Then why not other universes 
without number in the infinite space ? But 
these are vain questions which can never be 
answered. 

4. Of the Immanency of God in all things. — 

The Hebrew psalmist in his conception of 
the omnipresence of God had reached far be- 



GOD REIGNS 



yond the grossness so common in his day. 
'' Whither shall I go from thy spirit ? or 
whither shall I fly from Thy presence? If I 
ascend into heaven, Thou art there ; If I make 
my bed in hell, behold thou art there. If I take 
the wings of the morning and dwell in the 
uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall 
Thy hand guide me and Thy right hand shall 
hold me." [Psalm cxxxix, 7.] But God's 
omnipresence must be assumed as inseparable 
from any reasonable conception of the All- 
father. What is here to be briefly considered 
is the inherent, in-dwelling, constituting, sus- 
taining, controlling Wisdom, Power and Love 
of God in all things. And this profound and 
all-comprehensive doctrine is to be taken as 
the central harmony of the universe ; so that 
the unity of God implies the harmonious and 
consistent unity of all things. 

As to the manifestation of this unity in the 
visible universe, our knowledge is much greater 
now than was deemed possible half a century 
since. By use of the spectroscope we have 
traced the elements of our earth and the 
chemical laws of their action and interaction 
to the sun, the comets and the central suns of 



GOD REIGNS 



other systems ; by the photograph we have 
followed the chemical effects of light beyond 
the reach of the telescope to invisible stars ; 
aerolites falling to the earth from the sun, the 
moon, the star-dust of interstellar space, 
disintegrated comets or ruined wc)rlds — 
whencesoever they may come — have answered 
the chemist's quest with elements of the earth, 
subject to the same chemical laws ; while to 
the astronomer's eye the myriad shining 
worlds and wandering comets and careering 
meteors all move to the harmonious rhythm 
of a single system of celestial mechanics. 

Everywhere are the evidences of unity, and 
to the devout mind, everywhere the evidence 
of the immanency of God, who is proclaimed 
by Moses to have " created the heavens and 
the earth," and ^^in whom we live and move 
and have our being." 

We are to consider then, not that God is 
above and beyond and apart from the universe, 
sending forth edict and decree for its govern- 
ment, but that God's intimate presence is the 
essential existence of all things, without which 
there is neither matter nor f orce,neither thought 
nor feeling, neither life nor organization. 



GOD REIGNS 



All the forces which control the physical 
universe, all the feelings which move in the 
moral and emotional, are but manifestations 
of the in-dwelling power and love of God ; all 
the mysteries of the moving heavens, the syn- 
thetic relations of material atoms and the 
unending miracles of organization and life are 
only the utterance of the wisdom of God. 

5, Of Consciousness as an Attribute of God. 

Having now very briefly referred to the 
existence, infinity, personality and immanency 
of God in all things, and before proceeding to 
the consideration of God's consciousness, note 
that up to this point there is no dispute ; all 
men who have thought upon the subject 
admit the existence of a universe, its unity, 
harmony and all-prevailing and undeviating 
laws, though they may still not admit in them 
the thought of the wisdom or love of God. 

But as these discourses are to consider God 
as the sum and substance of all things, it be- 
came necessary to state the foregoing defini- 
tions as the foundation stones of the entire 
series, without which no intelligible structure 
of thought could be built. But the chief 
corner stone of that structure is intended to 



GOD REIGNS 13 



be the consciousness of that infinite existence 
which some call ^^Law," or " Nature," — GOD, 
who " created the heavens and the earth." 

What is consciousness? The American 
lexicographer defines it as ^^The knowledge 
of what passes in our own mind." That is 
human consciousness. It must be almost 
infinitely below that consciousness which ap- 
pears to pervade the universe. Man's con- 
sciousness is the knowledge of his own 
thought, the internal perception of his own 
reasoning. But does the universe as a whole 
or in any operation of nature or of natural 
law indicate reason ? Perhaps not reason 
after the human pattern. Reason is not the 
highest attribute of man — though usually so 
esteemed — but love, unselfish, spontaneous, 
unexacting love toward all conscious and 
sentient creatures, men and animals, without 
the hope or expectation of return, or any ques- 
tion of worthiness in the recipient. Reason 
is but the conscious operation of mental 
gropings after truth not manifest to direct per- 
ception. We never reason in pursuit of that 
we know, but of that we do not otherwise 
perceive. It is only a kind of mental mech- 



14 GOD REIGNS 



anism, like a calculating machine, by which 
we reach the unknown through the inter- 
dependence of known premises. Could we 
perceive all truth, possess all knowledge 
through our powers of observation alone, all 
reasoning would be at an end. 

It would appear therefore that reason is not 
predicable of God, knowing all things from 
the beginning. While, then, wisdom is an 
attribute of God, it is not the wisdom of 
reason but of infinite knowledge, the same 
yesterday, to-day and forever. 

And while, then, God does not reason after 
the method of man, we must still conceive of 
God's infinite consciousness, embracing the 
whirling suns and systems and the movement 
of infiinitesimal atoms. 

Does God, then, hear and see, as well as 
know ? " He that planted the ear, shall he 
not hear ? He who formed the eye shall he 
not see?" Yes, in a sense beyond our com- 
prehension God must hear and see; and in 
the same incomprehensible manner to the 
human mind, are exerted all the volitions of 
the Divine mind. And while we may see and 
appreciate some of these, as ^' seen through a 



GOD REIGNS 



15 



glass darkly," it must be always under the 
limitations of our own finite minds, out of 
which must come our imperfect conceptions 
of the infinite. 

6. Of the Will of God. 

The Will and the Power of God are to be 
understood as one, as manifested in that 
emanant Volition by which all things are 
controlled and sustained. It is that which by 
them who deny God is called Law, or Nature, 
or Force, and which by those unbelievers is 
supposed to be without consciousness and 
volition. 

What, then, is to be understood by the 
declaration that " In the beginning God created 
the heavens and the earth ?" Manifestly this: 
that from the beginning they have existed by 
the emanant Volition of God, — that is, from 
the beginning of these heavens and this earth, 
which modern science admits to have been 
within a limited period of time, no matter how 
vast. But more than this, writers of the Old 
Testament and of the New held that since 
that indefinite '' beginning," God's wisdom and 
power have created, controlled and upheld all 
things as in the beginning. So that the state- 



1 6 GOD REIGNS 



ment in Genesis is only an indefinite limitation 
in time applicable to ^^the heavens and the 
earth '^ for the grand announcement that their 
creator is God. And Moses in the beginning 
of Genesis, and with that grand simplicity of 
statement which is unparalleled, exhibits the 
continuous creative power of God through all 
evolutions of advancement upon the earth 
down to the era of mankind. 

In what way, then, does the Divine volition 
become efficient ? The answer is : We do not 
and cannot know. We do not know how our 
own will secures its behests in the control of 
our own bodies and its organs. But we may 
know, up to certain limits, what in the past 
has been the rule of action in the manifestation 
of divine power. In the movements of the 
heavenly bodies that manifestation we have 
called gravity and inertia, and we have learned 
the mode and sequence in which they appear 
always to secure the observed results ; but who 
shall say how gravity disposes all matter to 
come together, or how inertia determines all 
bodies to maintain unchanged their present 
condition of comparative rest or motion ? the 
accustomed modes in which these results 



GOD REIGNS 



17 



occur — their rule of action — we call Natural 
Laws ; but the law is only the rule of action : 
the power behind is God, — at once the legisla- 
tive, judicial and executive power. We know 
the modes in which affinity operates in the 
synthesis and analysis of simple and compound 
bodies from elementary atoms ; the sum of 
these modes we call chemistry. But who 
knows how affinity operates in assuring its re- 
sults and those modes of action which we cite 
as the laws of chemical force ? We are be- 
ginning to know much as to the manner in 
which life determines organization, and many 
of the manifold mysteries of plants and 
animals; but what do we know of life itself ? 
Nothing, not even whether it is the antecedent 
or consequence of organization. 

In all these things we can only know results, 
and the sequences according to which they oc- 
cur — their modes of action — and we call these 
modes natural law^s. But God is behind all, 
in all and over all. 

7. Of God's love. — 

The Apostle John declares, absolutely, that 
*^God is Love." — ist Gen'l Epist. iv, 7. 

Many of the Old Testament writers, and 



1 8 GOD REIGNS 



especially David in the Psalms, proclaim the 
Love of God, notwithstanding the vengeful as- 
pect of the Hebrew theology ; and Love is al- 
most the entire burden of the teachings of 
Jesus, who consented to a terrible death for 
his love to men. David exclaims: "How ex- 
cellent is thy loving kindness, Oh God! there- 
fore the children of men put their trust under 
the shadow of thy wings." [Psalm xxvi, 7]. 
And Jesus in the Sermon on the mount, de- 
clares that the love of God is absolute and 
without conditions : " I say unto you, Love 
your enemies and pray for them that persecute 
you, that ye may be sons of your Father which 
is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on 
the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the 
just and the unjust." [ Matt, vi, 44]. And he 
declares that it was also the law^ as announced 
by Moses, and one of the Commandments, 
that "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," 
[Matt. XIX, 19], not teaching that man's love 
should be more unconditional than that of God, 
but the same. 

It is to be understood then, that the love of 
God which is "over all his works," is infinite 
and without reserve toward all his creatures. 



GOD REIGNS 19 



and unqualified by their acts, whether good or 
evil. But this does not conflict with the dec- 
laration that ^^Whom the Lord loveth he 
chasteneth," [Heb. xii, 6], for in the very na- 
ture of things it is impossible to receive the 
happiness involved in the law of our being, 
except by conformity therewith. 

In this series of discourses it is to be admit- 
ted, then, that to them who do not accept the 
Bible as a direct revelation from God, his ex- 
istence and attributes can only be shown in 
the same manner as that of the so-called na- 
tural laws, which we know only from their ob- 
served effects ; and in the same manner as the 
existence of gravity, inertia, affinity and the 
laws of life and organization are assumed in 
the Godless treatises of modern science, it is 
intended to replace God as the supreme head 
of the universe, physical, mental and moral. 




GOD REIGNS 



SERMON II. 

^^And the Spirit of God moved upon the 
face of the waters." — Gen. i, 2. 

An amusement not uncommon among lads 
of an inquiring turn of mind consists in 
setting on end a hundred bricks to see the 
whole series successively fall from an impulse 
given to the first. It may be taken as a not 
inapt illustration of modern physical philoso- 
phy. Push the first brick with the hand and 
the energy thereby imparted over-comes the 
inertia of rest and changes it to the inertia of 
motion : it is now disposed to move, and 
passing beyond the centre of gravity, it falls 
against the second .of the series from the 
joint effects of the original muscular impulse, 
gravity and its own inertia. Striking the sec- 
ond of the series, it imparts to that a portion 
of its own inertia of motion — its momentum — 
and impels it to strike the third in the series 
from the movement transmitted from the first. 
In the same manner the third is made to over- 



GOD REIGNS 



throw the fourth, and so in succession to the 
end of the series. 

Now the theory of all this is : the whole 
series of bricks from the disposition common 
to all bodies to maintain that condition of rest 
or of motion in which they may at any time be 
found, being now at rest, would remain so for- 
ever, unless a disposition to move be imparted 
from without. Gravitation toward the earth's 
centre being in equilibrium on all sides, main- 
tains them in the upright position, and their 
inertia disposes them to remain at rest. But 
when the first of the series receives an impulse 
from without, it falls, and the sequential fall of 
the whole follows by the transmission to the 
last of the impulse imparted to the first, in ac- 
cordance with the "laws of Motion.'' As 
stated by Newton these are : 

1. Every body continues in its state of rest 
or uniform motion in a straight line, unless com- 
pelled to change the state by an external force. 

2. Every motion or change of motion is in 
direction of the force impressed and is propor- 
tionate to it. 

3. Action and reaction are equal, and oppo- 
site in direction. 



GOD REIGNS 



Since Newton's time some additional laws 
have been discovered which may affect motion, 
the most essential of which is known as that of 
the " Correlation and Conservation of Force," 
or more correctly as now held, the " Conser- 
vation of Energy." It is stated thus : 

'' Considering the universe as a whole, the 
su7n of all forces is a constant quantity." Ac- 
cording to this doctrine energy is as indestruc- 
tible as matter. But all energy may be chang- 
ed inform and converted from one to another, 
so as to appear as mechanical energy of mo- 
tion, heat, light, electricity, chemical affinity 
and (as held by some) muscular contractility, 
etc. And of these motiofi is considered the 
essential basis, and the varieties of force but 
modes of motion. And these and other so- 
called natural laws are held to be sufficient to 
account for the universe as it has been in the 
past, now is and ever shall be. Many promi- 
nent scientists hold that there never was any 
first cause of matter and of worlds and all that 
in them is, neither in a beginning as relates to 
time, nor any present relation of causation ; 
and some deny the existence of any cause at 
any time, and hold that the only relation 



GOD REIGNS 23 



between events is that of sequence, one thing 
following another in an infinite series of sequen- 
ces. According to these no intelligent volition 
moved the first of nature's bricks, no conscious 
energy set them up, and they fell not from any 
true causation, but only from inevitable se- 
quence by which the first brick of a series be- 
comes the antecedent of the second, and so 
through the series, backward as well as for- 
ward. And they hold that the number of bricks 
necessary to illustrate their views is infinite 
and not to be counted by hundreds, and that 
they have received an infinite number of im- 
pulses down to the present time, and will trans- 
mit them to other bricks ad infinitinn^ either 
as mechanical motion, heat, light, electricity 
or some other mode of the common sum of en- 
ergy in the universe. Now, suppose we with- 
draw the consciousness controlling the arm of 
the boy w^ho erects his hundred bricks and 
starts them to knocking each other down; is 
there any possible operation of any form of en- 
ergy known to science which can set up the 
hundred bricks and start them again to falling 
one by one, without the intervention of intelli- 
gent volition ? It is safe to assert that there 



24 GOD REIGNS 



is not. And yet, independent of any series of 
sequences connecting him with what follows, 
the lad by his will, guided by his intelligence,sets 
in motion the muscular contractions which erect 
the series and start the first brick, and insure 
the effects of gravitation and inertia in upset- 
ting the whole number. Could the establish- 
ment of the solar system and the fitting up of 
the earth and all the wonders of nature be ac- 
complished without intelligent volition, and 
yet not the setting up and the knocking down 
of a hundred bricks ? How much greater 
must be the credulity required to believe that 
than the declaration of Moses: " In the begin- 
ning God created the heavens and the earth ? '^ 
It is not denied that the procedure of evolu- 
tion in the history of the solar system and of 
the earth has been according to ascertained 
natural laws, but only the efficiency of the laws 
themselves in inducing and determining the 
results. And it will be maintained in these dis- 
courses that the universe is controlled by a 
conscious and constant volition upon which 
the so-called laws themselves depend. John 
in the Gospel bearing his name, declares : 
"God is a spirit," [iv, 24]; but they who 



GOD REIGNS 



25 



pretend to understand the laws of nature are 
unable to understand what spirit is — and very 
naturally; but how then do they understand 
what the law of gravitation is, which extends 
and operates invisibly throughout the universe? 
Paul told the men of Athens that ^^God made 
the world and all things therein/' and that 
they should '' seek God, if haply they might 
feel after him and find him, though he is not 
far from each one of us." [ Acts xvii, 27]. Is 
it anymore difficult to conceive of the presence 
of God in all things than that of gravity? We 
know of gravitation only by its effects ; may 
we not know God in the same way? But 
gravity, we are told, is a law of matter ; but 
no one explains how it operates to produce 
the observed effects, or can determine whether 
it resides in matter or operates from without. 
It is mysterious as God, and its existence no 
more certainly proven. So with other " laws 
of nature," the operation of which produces 
results so like those of intelligent volition as 
to leave no reasonable doubt that the laws 
themselves are only the rules of action under 
which that volition operates. 

Leading scientists now-a-days write for the 



26 GOD REIGNS 



eyes of each other more than for the general 
public ; and it is the fashion among them to 
ignore God, and never to mention his name, 
— some because they deny him, and some be- 
cause, as they say, nothing can be known con- 
cerning him. But no men since the days of 
Jesus and his apostles have, though unwitting- 
ly, done so much to demonstrate the existence 
of God (to them who are able to receive it) as 
these same doubting scientists, who recite the 
history of creation from the original star-dust 
down to the present time totally oblivious 
of God. With some additions they admit as 
a beginning the well known nebular hypothe- 
sis first propounded by Laplace ; which briefly 
stated was this : It supposed the matter of 
the solar system to have ^^ existed originally 
in the form of a vast diffused revolving nebu- 
la, which gradually cooling and contracting, 
threw off, in obedience to mechanical and 
physical laws, successive rings of matter, from 
which subsequently by the same laws were 
produced the several planets, satelites and 
other bodies of the system." And by these 
same laws, and certain others equally without 
intelligence, it is now held, that the earth and 



GOD REIGNS 27 



its inhabitants have originated and reached 
their present condition. 

In 1874, at Belfast, Ireland, Professor John 
Tyndall, one of the ablest and most candid, 
and certainly the most eloquent of British 
scientists, in reviewing this whole subject 
said : 

^^ Abandoning all disguise, the confession 
that I feel bound to make to you is, that I pro- 
long the vision backward across the boundary 
of the experimental evidence, and discern in 
that matter which we in our ignorance, and 
notwithstanding our professed reverence for 
its Creator, have hitherto covered with oppro- 
brium the promise and potency of every form 
and quality of life." 

Now, this declaration implies, either that 
Prof. Tyndall by his backward vision in the 
original nebula of star-dust saw sufficient po- 
tency and promise of the earth's beginning 
and progress down to the present hour with- 
out either love or intelligence, or that he saw 
the intelligence and love in the laws themsel- 
ves by which the results have been secured. 

If the former alternative was his belief, then 
he must claim that the laws from which love 



28 GOD REIGNS 



and wisdom are absent have insured results 
which so resemble those of intelligent volition 
as to make its absence more difficult to demon- 
strate than the existence of God ; or he must 
claim that the laws of nature are themselves 
endowed with the attributes of Deity. Why 
not say at once that God is the source of the 
natural laws, and so save much circumlocution? 

In defending himself against certain criti- 
cisms in the ^^Contemporary Review" of 
his utterances in this Belfast address, Prof. 
Tyndall said : 

" It is a matter of experience that an earthly 
father, who is at the same time both wise and 
tender, listens to the requests of his children, 
and if they do not ask amiss, takes pleasure 
in granting their requests. We know also that 
this compliance extends to the alteration, 
within certain limits of the current of events 
on earth. With this suggestion offered by our 
experience, it is no departure from scientific 
method to place behind natural phenomena a 
universal Father, who, in answer to the prayers 
of his children alters the currents of those 
phenomena. ^ ^ ^ ^\i^ conception of 
personal volition in nature is suggested by 



GOD REIGNS 



29 



the ordinary action of man upon earth." But 
he claims that this has not been proven, and 
declares that ^'without verification a theoretic 
conception is a mere figment of the intellect." 
There are some very remarkable admissions 
in these paragraphs for a scientist who be- 
lieves matter and law to be all-sufficient in 
explaining the phenomena of the earth and 
its living inhabitants. 

1. It is admitted that even the volition of 
men may alter the current of natural phe- 
nomena, without destroying the harmony of 
the universe, as many claim that would do. 
If, then, the infinite series of sequences can be 
thus harmlessly broken by the will of men, 
much more must that sequence be subject to 
infinite intelligence and power, safely secured 
against injury by infinite love. But the ad- 
mission that the current of natural phenomena 
may be changed by any power whatever is 
not the belief of other materialistic teachers, 
as will be shown hereafter. 

2. It is admitted to be '' no departure from 
scientific method to place behind natural phe- 
nomena a universal Father " who '' alters the 
currents of those phenomena." It is some 



30 GOD REIGNS 



relief to learn from so eminent authority that 
belief in God is not unscientific, even though 
it may be unverified and therefore " a mere 
figment of the intellect." But how about the 
'' universal ether " which is claimed by men 
of science to fill all space, even permeating all 
known bodies, and forming the connecting 
medium between all worlds ? It is not pre- 
tended that its existence can be verified; it is 
assumed as a necessity to explain known facts 
in nature. And though the whole frame of 
modern science would fall without it, it must 
be, until verified, '' a mere figment of the in- 
tellect." It is equally true of the ^^ Atomic 
Theory " accepted as the basis of chemical 
science. The existence of atoms has not been 
and probably cannot be verified. So with 
some other theoretic conceptions admitted by 
scientists, the assumption of which is less 
logical than to ^^ place God behind the phe- 
nomena of nature," as expressed by Prof. 
Tyndall. 

On the whole, the most remarkable thing 
about this address is, that admitting so much, 
Mr. Tyndall did not feel impelled to admit 
more, and then and there announce his belief 



GOD REIGNS 



31 



in a conscious Will and an infinite loving 
kindness over all the universe. 

It would in the present state of science be 
hardly worth while to enquire whether Moses 
meant to declare that God created the 
heavens and the earth out of nothing, or that 
he made them by the power of conscious voli- 
tion out of previously existing matter, because it 
is now a debated question whether there really 
is any such thing as matter, in the old sense 
of an}' substance which occupies space. Some 
now hold that what has been called material 
atoms are but focal centres of natural forces ; 
and others that our conceptions of material 
things are subjective and arise within, and do 
not exist as objects without, as they appear to 
us. But in any case, Moses intended to teach 
that God by infinite wisdom, love and power, 
controlled and determined the evolution of 
the earth, from the original chaos down to the 
coming of man and after ; and that '^ God saw 
ever} thing that he had made, and behold, it 
was very good ! " 

In so far then as the exceedingly small may 
illustrate the infinitely great, the child's 
amusement with the hundred bricks may 



32 GOD REIGNS 



illustrate the creation of the heavens and the 
earth. Infinite volition set up and overset 
as the divine plan demanded, the elements 
which have entered into the creation of the 
universe, the fitting up of the earth for the 
habitation of sentient creatures, and culmin- 
ating at last in the coming of man. 

It is not a little remarkable that the account 
over three thousand years ago given by Moses, 
instructed, as was said by Stephen [Acts vii : 
27], '^in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," 
should so nearly correspond with that given 
by modern astronomers and geologists. The 
science known to the Egyptians, if Moses had 
his knowledge from that, was much more ad- 
vanced than has generally been believed, as to 
the cosmogony and successive peopling of the 
earth by plants, fishes, birds, mammals and 
man. And if Moses did not learn his cos- 
mogony from the Egyptians, it must be asked 
of him as was done of one greater than Moses : 
^^ Whence hath this man these things?" 
[Mark vi : 2]. 

As to the indefinite evenings and mornings 
alluded to by Moses, there appears sufficient 
room to believe they have been as long as the 



GOD REIGNS 33 



vast periods claimed by the astronomers and 
geologists, and gave ample time for the de- 
velopment of results in accordance with the 
course of those natural laws so much relied 
upon by some leaders in science who teach 
that Nature is able, if only we allow time 
enough, to get along without God. 

In conclusion for this hour, it is perhaps 
safe to assume that whether from the teach- 
ings of Moses, from beholding the wonderful 
works of divine power and loving kindness, or 
from the sentiment of worship which is in- 
wrought in the human heart, men will continue 
to exclaim with the Psalmist : '' Oh, Lord, our 
Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the 
earth." [Psalms viii: i]. 




34 GOD REIGNS 



SERMON III. 

" And God saw everything that he had made, 
and behold, it was very good." — Gen. i, 31. 

Most recent teachers of geology avoid all at- 
tempt to show any indications of intelligence 
as manifested in the earth's changes through- 
out the grand sweep of geological progress ; 
and many of them deny that there are any 
such indications. The once celebrated "• Bridg- 
water Treatise," of Buckland, prepared for the 
express purpose of demonstrating love and de- 
sign in the earth's history, though exceedingly 
able, was written at a time when the science 
of geology was in its infancy, and is now little 
known. But even the citation of that inter- 
esting volume clearly indicates that if Prof. 
Tyndall, armed with all the scientific lore he 
now possesses, had been required to " prolong 
his vision " forward, instead of backward, 
standing at the dawn of life upon the earth, 
he would not have discerned '^ the prom- 
ise and potency of every form and quality of 



GOD REIGNS 35 



life " which was to follow in the coming ages. 
His vision backward is better than his or any 
other man's vision forward. And the knowl- 
edge which we now have of the grand phe- 
nomena of the earth's evolution, ^' as seen 
across the boundary of the experimental evi- 
dence/' prompts the exclamation: If "the un- 
devout astronomer is mad," with ten-fold force 
must also be the undevout geologist. 

But who shall condense the vast cycles of 
geologic history to the compass of a single 
discourse; and, in the language of Tyndall, 
"• place behind the natural phenomena a uni- 
versal Father ?" Happy is he who has so far 
mastered this science of sciences as to be able 
in the mind's eye to behold in the grand march 
of the ages by which the earth has passed 
from the dominion of inconceivable heat, 
through the formation of the azoic rocks; 
through the paleozoic eons of progression, 
after organization and life appeared, — the eras 
of the reign of fishes, of saurians, of birds, of 
mammals, and the grand climax, of man. But 
still happier is he who is able to see in all 
these progressive mutations the accumulated 
proofs that God created the heavens and the 



36 GOD REIGNS 



earth, and '' his tender mercies are over all 
His works." [Psalms cxlv, 9.] 

If we deny the dominance of conscious voli 
tion and love in nature, we are compelled to 
assume that matter is divine. Let us see: 

All matter is subject to the law of gravita- 
tion, which is thus defined: ^^ Every particle 
of matter in the universe has an attraction 
for — tends to approach — every other particle." 
It is in its action instantaneous throughout the 
universe. Says a text-book on Natural Phil- 
osophy (Avery's): ^^ Light and electricity re- 
quire time to traverse space; not so with this 
force (gravitation). If a new star were created 
in distant space, its light might not reach the 
earth for hundreds of thousands of years. It 
might be invisible for many generations to 
come, but its pitll (from gravitation) would be 
felt by the earth in the twinkling of an eye." 
But this filling of infinite space, with infinite 
power to act on the instant throughout all 
space is an attribute of Deity; and when con- 
sidered closely can only be conceived of as 
the divine volition. But we are told by those 
who oppose this view that gravitation is sim- 
ply a universal law of matter. But this is 



GOD REIGNS 



37 



putting a word for an explanation: Does the 
so-called law fill all space and compel the 
obedience of matter to the law? Then it is in 
the nature of an infinite executive volition. Or 
does the gravitating tendency reside in matter 
itself ? Then it must have infinite power of 
acting where it is not, — which is absurd. Sir 
Isaac Newton, who first defined the law of grav- 
itation, wrote to Bentley as follows: ^^ That 
gravity should be innate, inherent and essen- 
tial to matter, so that one body may act upon 
another at a distance through a vacuum^ and 
without mediation of anything else by and 
through this action and force may be conveyed, 
is to me so great an absurdity that I believe 
no man who has in philosophical matters a 
competent faculty of thinking can never fall 
into it.'' [Quoted by Lewes, ^^ Problems of 
Life and Mind,'* Volume ii. Appendix C] 

This subject has been discussed here, when 
we are about to consider the geological his- 
tory of the earth, because gravitation is the 
prime agent in all its changes. Gravitation 
threw down upon the central focus of attrac- 
tion the nebulous matter which constituted 
the sun and planets (including the earth). 



38 GOD REIGNS 



evolved the sun's heat by the law of the cor- 
relation of energy, and the central heat of the 
earth, which has played so important a part in 
its history, and so furnished the initial point in 
all that play of forces which marked the earth's 
career down to the advent of life upon the 
planet, and, as some contend, including that 
also. January 21st of this year (1887), Prof. 
Sir William Thompson, in a lecture at the 
theater of the Royal Institution, as reported 
by the London Telegraphy said: ^^But in the 
millions of years which geology carried us 
back, it might safely be said there must have 
been great changes. How had the solar fires 
been maintained during those ages? The 
scientific answer to this question was the the- 
ory of Helmholtz, that the sun was a vast 
globe gradually cooling, but as it cooled, 
shrinking, and that the shrinkage — which was 
the effect of gravity upon its mass — kept up 
the temperature. The total of the sun's heat 
was equal to that which would be required to 
keep up 476,000 millions of millions horse- 
power, or about 78,000 horse-power for every 
square metre — a little more than a square 
yard — and yet the modern dynamical theory 



GOD REIGNS 39 



of heat shows that the sun's mass would re- 
quire only to fall in or contract thirty-five me- 
tres per annum to keep up that tremendous 
energy. At this rate the solar radius in 2,000 
years' time would be about one-hundredth 
per cent, less than at present. ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 

Sir William Thompson declined to discuss 
any chemical source of heat, which, whatever 
its effect when primeval elements first came 
into contact, was absolutely insignificant com- 
pared with the effects of gravity after globes 
like the sun and the earth had been formed. 

In all these speculations they were in the 
end driven to the ultimate elements of matter 
— to the question — when they thought what 
became of all the sun's heat— what is the 
luminiferous ether that fills space, and to that 
most wonderful form of force upon which 
Faraday spent so much of the thought of his 
later years — gravity." 

So, then, gravitation is not subject to space, 
time, or change, and is the initial mode in all 
the correlations of energy. But matter is 
credited with another quality almost or quite 
as important ; and though bearing a negative 
name — inertia — is of an exceedingly positive 



40 GOD REIGNS 



character. So far as we know, all the matter 
in the universe is moving, and rest is only rela- 
tive. The law of inertia is : Matter is in- 
capable of changing its condition of motion, and 
resists any change with a force proportionate 
to its mass. It will be seen that this property 
is in direct conflict with gravitation ; and it is 
logical to presume that if it resides in matter, 
gravitation does not. We have seen that mat- 
ter is unable to alter its condition of motion ; 
but gravitation is able to alter it ; and if both 
are attributes of matter, it involves the ab- 
surdity that matter cannot change its condi- 
tion of motion, and matter can change its con- 
dition of motion. 

But, however all this may be, gravity and 
inertia have been the chief of the modes of 
energy which have governed the evolution of 
the earth down to the present time. Then, if 
we are ready to ^^ place God behind the phe- 
nomena of nature," we can see how the earth 
began its history, begotten of the fire emerg- 
ing from the generative force of gravitation, 
with " the promise and potency of every form 
and quality of life." 

In its earlier periods the earth must have 



GOD REIGNS 41 



been in a fluid condition, and disposed to cool 
into a homogeneous globular mass, with water 
and the atmosphere equally distributed over 
its surface. Moses, in language adapted to 
the Hebrew people of his day, declares: '' God 
said, let the waters be gathered together into 
one place, and let the dry land appear, and it 
was so." [Genesis i, g.] 

It is almost inconceivable that by the un- 
guided action alone of gravitation and inertia 
this separation could have been produced in 
the manner it has been, instead of leaving the 
ocean evenly distributed over the surface as 
the atmosphere is j and yet those forces are 
the prime factors in the earth's economy and 
adaptation to plants and animals, for they are 
the initials of heat, liquifaction, evaporation, 
precipitation, the upheaval of mountains and 
the ocean tides. ^' It is no departure from 
scientific method" (in the words of Tyndall) 
*^to place behind the natural phenomena, a 
universal Father," who may use the force of 
gravitation as the minister of his will. 

We have now seen what gravitation and in- 
ertia as prime ministers of God could effect in 
preparing a world for the introduction of living 



42 GOD REIGNS 



creatures, plants and animals. Life, the 
very breath of the Most High, was to exhibit 
its miracles, first in the waters and afterward 
upon the land which stood out of the waters. 

It is no more possible to define Life than to 
define God; in a sense they are one. But its 
manifestation in plants and animals is specific, 
and must be so considered. But it is not nec- 
essary to object to certain views of Haeckel, 
the noted author of " The History of Crea- 
tion," and a leading teacher of one of the 
forms of Materialism. When treating of the 
'^ unity of organic and inorganic nature," he 
says: "The idea of the unity of organic and 
inorganic nature is now firmly established. 
^ % ^ The unity of all nature, the ani- 
mating of all matter, the inseparability of men- 
tal power and corporeal substance. Goethe 
has asserted in the following words: ' Matter 
can never exist and be active without mind, 
nor can mind without matter.'" [Volume i, 
page 22, "History of Creation."] 

Very well. Matter was exceedingly active 
in forming the earth and fitting it up for plants 
and animals, for vast ages, before there was 
feeling, or consciousness, or any manifesta- 



GOD REIGNS 43 



tion of mind upon the globe, except that of the 
mind of God, working by gravitation and cor- 
related forces, until the coming of plants and 
animals. But Haeckel claims that all natural 
bodies are equally animated. He says: "We 
thus arrive at the extremely important con- 
viction that all natural bodies which are known 
to us are equally auijuated^ that the distinction 
which has been made between animate and 
inanimate bodies does not exist when a stone 
is thrown into the air and falls to earth, ac- 
cording to definite laws, or when in a solution 
of salt a crystal is formed, the phenomenon is 
neither more nor less than a mechanical mani- 
festation of life than the growth and flowering 
of plants, than the propagation of animals or 
the activity of their senses, than the percep- 
tion or the formation of thought in man." 
[Volume I, page 23.] 

Very well again. There is a good deal of 
theism in these views, after all. But instead 
of calling the author of those manifestations 
God, he calls him Life. Moses understood 
that life was but the spirit (or breath) of the 
Almighty, who " breathed into his " (Adam's) 
" nostrils the breath of life, and he became a 



44 GOD REIGNS 



living soul." [Genesis ii, 7.] And Job de- 
clares: '' The spirit of God has made me, and 
the breath of the Almighty hath given me 
life, [xxxiii, 4.] 

The objection to the view of Haeckel is that 
it banishes consciousness from the phenomena 
of nature and leaves the universe indebted to 
gravitation as the universal bond which secures 
that unity which he advocates. For denying 
God and disregarding the mystical ether which 
is ^^ without verification/* and therefore, in the 
words of Tyndall, '' a mere figment of the in- 
tellect," there is nothing else which fills all 
space and is independent of time and space. 

The introduction of life upon the earth was 
a very slow and a very long process. Mr. 
Lewes, treating of the beginnings of life, says: 
" The conclusion seems inevitable that where- 
ever and whenever the state of things per- 
mitted that peculiar combination of elements 
known as organized substance, there and then 
a center was established — Life had a root. 
From roots closely resembling each other in 
all essential characters, but all more or less 
different, there have been developed the vari- 
ous stems of the great tree. Myriads of roots 



GOD REIGNS 45 



have probably perished without issue; myri- 
ads have developed into forms so ill' adapted 
to sustain the fluctuations of the medium, so 
ill-fitted for the struggle of existence, that they 
became extinct before even our organic record 
begins; myriads have become extinct since 
then; and the descendants of these which now 
survive are like the shattered regiments and 
companies after some terrific battle." ["Physi- 
cal Basis of Mind," page 121.] 

Haeckel declares that " at a certain definite 
time life had its beginnings upon earth, and 
that terrestrial organisms did not exist from 
eternity, but at a certain period came into ex- 
istence for the first time." [History of Crea- 
tion, Volume I, page 337.] 

How was life — living organisms — introduced 
upon the earth? " At this point," says Haeckel, 
" most naturalists, even at the present day, are 
inclined to give up the attempt at natural ex- 
planation, and take refuge in the miracle of 
an inconceivable creation." And yet this same 
philosopher details the steps of that stupen- 
dous miracle in which he himself believes, the 
evolution of man from a sponge. What does 
he do with the problem of life's origin 



46 GOD REIGNS 



upon the earth? He falls back on the ex- 
ploded hypothesis of spontaneous generation — 
the derivation of the living from the not-living. 
He labors through a dozen pages to prove the 
possibility of spontaneous or parentless gener- 
ation; admits that it has not been shown, and 
rests in the declaration that '' the impossibil- 
ity of such a process can never be proved." 
And, '^if we do not accept this hypothesis of 
spontaneous generation," he concludes, ^^then 
at this one point of the history of development 
we must have recourse to the miracle of a 
supernatural creation. The Creator must 
have created the first organism, or a few first 
organisms, from which all others are derived." 
[ History of Creation, Volume i, page 343.] 

No, there is no such alternative. Replace 
God ^^ behind the phenomena of nature," as 
Tyndall says ; or better, restore Him to His 
kingdom a7nid the phenomena of nature, and 
no miracle is needed — or all is miracle, at all 
times. It need not be conceived that God in- 
terposes from without, like a wise king ruling 
his dominions, but only that he works his will 
within the phenomena of the universe. Nor 
is it to be supposed that the divine mind pon- 



GOD REIGNS 47 



ders upon his acts, after the manner of men 
who, not knowing all things, must consider of 
them by their reason. God, who knoweth all 
things from the beginning, needs not to- rea- 
son, nor to plan, nor to have any designs for 
the future; and he enacts no miracles which 
involve the violation of His own laws — that is 
of His order and unchangeableness. God and 
His universe are as harmonious in their opera- 
tion as the functions of a living organism. He 
does not set a universal mechanism to running, 
and leave it to take care of itself. He con- 
stantly " upholds all things by the word of His 
power.'* [Hebrews i, 3.] 

How living beings were introduced upon the 
earth — the mechanical or philosophical man- 
ner of their origin and genesis, — is unknown, 
and will probably forever remain so. One 
thing appears now to be settled beyond per- 
adventure: All living creatures now existing 
were derived from previously existing living 
parents. It is also no longer questioned that 
life upon the earth had a beginning, ages after 
the planet had formed a hardened crust upon 
the central mass. But at w^hat definite geo- 
logical epoch life first appeared is not clearly 



48 GOD REIGNS 



ascertained ; for living creatures may have 
lived, died, become fossilized, and afterward 
melted down in the igneous rocks before the 
earliest forms still preserved to us came into 
existence. But the exceeding simplicity of 
the fossil organisms which are still preserved 
in the oldest fossiliferous rocks indicates that 
we have reached back in our researches 
almost to the beginning of life on the globe. 

And now, when we consider the introduc- 
tion of living organisms upon the earth, it 
must appear to us the most stupendous event 
in the history of the universe. 

According to evolutionists, a few specks of 
protoplasmic albumen, having been not alive, 
suddenly lived, multiplied themselves by divid- 
ing into countless millions, were evolved into 
living nucleated cells, which were aggregated 
into more and more complex organisms, as 
shown by geology — fishes, reptiles, mammals, 
man — following each other at inconceivable 
periods of time in the geological history. Or- 
ganized manifestations of God, expressing, in 
infinitely lower degree — feeling, sensation, 
perception, volition, consciousness, righteous- 
ness, love. 



GOD REIGNS 49 



Before the coming of living creatures neither 
feehng, sensation, perception, volition, con- 
sciousness, reason, righteousness nor love had 
any receptacles upon the earth, and no organ- 
isms by which they might be manifested or 
received. Gravitation and inertia as ministers 
of His providential power had formed the 
earth into a proper habitation for the coming 
recipients of God's love and wisdom; and ad- 
vancing organization and the rise of feeling, 
perception, volition, consciousness, reason, 
righteousness, and love — the most God-like of 
all — moved on together. Well might David 
exclaim: ^^The works of the Lord are great, 
sought out of all them that have pleasure in 
them. His work is honorable and glori- 
ous, and his righteousness endureth forever." 
[Psalms CXI, 2, 3.] 




50 GOD REIGNS 



SERMON IV. 

^^ And God said: Let the waters bring forth 
abundantly the moving creature that hath life, 
and fowl that may fly above the earth in the 
open firmament of heaven. And God said : 
Let the earth bring forth the living creature 
after his kind, cattle and creeping things, and 
beasts of the earth after his kind ; and it 
was so." — Gen. i, 20, 24. 

We have now to consider the sweeping 
hypothesis which has interfered with all relig- 
ious creeds and all philosophies — the hypoth- 
esis of evolution. And in the very beginning 
it becomes necessary to define, as near as may 
be in a single discourse, the most comprehen- 
sive system of philosophy ever maintained. 
Evolutionists are far from being agreed among 
themselves as to the less important points of 
their system; but the following statement is 
believed to recite the fundamental proposi- 
tions upon which nearly all teachers of evolu- 
tion agree : 



GOD REIGNS 51 



1. The material laws of the universe, with- 
out the interposition of God, have brought the 
sun, the planets and the earth from chaotic 
nebula or star-dust to their present condition. 

2. That other natural laws — or correlations 
of the same — have introduced living creatures, 
plants and animals, upon the earth. 

3. That the first living things were simply 
formless specks of albuminous matter, which 
had been not-living, and were parentless. 

4. That those living amorphous specks of 
protoplasmic albumin, few in number at first, 
multiplied themselves by division into count- 
less millions, increased through successive 
eras the complexity of their forms and func- 
tions until, in the course of measureless ages 
they had evolved successively highly organ- 
ized plants, and improved animal organisms — 
fishes, saurians, birds, mammals, man and all 
intermediate forms and modes of life. 

In explanation and support of these propo- 
sitions, evolutionists rely upon the following 
agencies, assumed to be mechanical and self- 
acting natural laws : 

I. The ^^ Struggle for Existence," as it is 
called by Darwin; or, the " Competition for 



52 GOD REIGNS 



the Means, of Subsistence/' as Haeckel terms 
it; who also declares that " Darwin assumes 
no kind of unknown forces of nature, nor 
hypothetical conditions, as the acting causes 
for the transformation of organic forms, but 
solely and simply the universally recognized 
vital activities of all organisms, which we term 
inheritance and adaptation." That ^' the in- 
teraction of these two functions effects a con- 
tinual, slow transmutation of organic forms 
is," he declares, "a necessary result of the 
struggle for existence." [History of Creation, 
Volume I, page 169.] 

Again, he says: "All the different forms of 
organisms which people are usually inclined 
to look upon as the products of a creative 
power, acting for a definite purpose, we, ac- 
cording to the Theory of Selection, can con- 
ceive as the necessary productions of natural 
selection, working without a purpose — as the 
unconscious interaction between the two prop- 
erties of mutability and hereditivity." [ His- 
tory of Creation, Volume i, page 176.] 

In that never-ending struggle, the weaker 
and least adapted to their environments, per- 
ish early, while the stronger and better adapted 



GOD REIGNS 53 



survive and conform themselves by physiolog- 
ical action more and more to their surround- 
ings, modifying both forms and functions. 

These adaptations and survival of the fittest 
are the first steps in the evolution of new 
species of plants and animals. 

2. The transmission to offspring by inherit- 
ance of those modified forms and adaptations 
accumulated from generation to generation, 
giving rise to new species by " Natural Selec- 
tion," or ^^What is the same thing," says 
Haeckel, ^^by the interaction of Inheritance 
and Adaptation! in the struggle for life." 

3. New functions and new forms of the 
organs arise according to "the law of cumula- 
tive adaptations and established inheritance;" 
and so, it is maintained, all complex forms 
have arisen, including organs of the senses 
and the mental faculties of man, by the pro- 
gressive adaptation of the brain; and includ- 
ing the moral sentiments, as insisted by Mr. 
Herbert Spencer in his book entitled " The 
Data of Ethics." And all this without any 
intelligent purpose or control. 

The question to be examined is — not the 
truth of the evolutionary history of the earth 



54 GOD REIGNS 



and its inhabitants as recited by teachers of 
the new philosophy: science will finally de- 
cide all questions of that kind, but — have those 
changes by which formless lumps of not-living 
albumen lived, and from which man is de- 
clared to have been evolved, come about 
without the intervention of conscious volition? 
Has the universe been evolved from chaotic 
matter without the controlling will of God ? 
Haeckel, and most evolutionists, reply in the 
affirmative; and as the great German scholar 
and evolutionist makes, perhaps, the clearest 
statement of that side of the question, frequent 
reference will be made in this discussion to 
the English edition of his '^ History of Crea- 
tion." 

It appears to be at present fully established 
that living plants and animals do not now 
come into existence in any other manner than 
by descent from living parents; life does not 
spontaneously arise. It is admitted, even by 
Haeckel, as we have seen, that it has not been 
shown that living plants or animals ever did 
arise from not-living matter. But while ad- 
mitting this he declares that " spontaneous 
generation" is not i^npossible, and that "a 



GOD REIGNS 



55 



truly natural and consistent view of organisms 
can assume no supernatural act of creation. — 
[History of Creation, Volume i, page 48.] But 
living organisms exist; they must have arisen, 
according to Haeckel's own views, from the 
not-living, and in violation of all known natural 
laws — as clearly a miracle as any recorded in 
the New Testament. Tyndall, we have seen, 
admits that " it is no departure from scientific 
method to place behind natural phenomena a 
universal Father, who >k ^ * alters the 
current of those phenomena — within cer- 
tain limits — as he says in the same paragraph. 
Does the calling into life of the not-living ex- 
ceed those limits, and must that event occur 
only under the agency of natural laws ? 

Then it would appear that nature may work 
a miracle when God may not. 

But it is not here assumed that the coming 
of living creatures into being is any more 
miraculous than is the upholding of that being 
and controlling all subsequent changes, by 
evolution, or otherwise. God is in all and over 
all. And while, probably, there was neither 
plan nor design in the human sense in the call- 
ing of living creatures into being, there was 



56 GOD REIGNS 

that divine purpose and adaptation which 
needed not consideration, or reasoning, 
or any manner of ratiocination, which is 
in harmony with infinite intelligence, knowing 
all things from the beginning. When we go 
down, mentally, to the base of the series of 
fossiliferous rocks, and trace the history of 
living forms in the waters, advancing from age 
to age in constantly improving series of higher 
and more complex forms, we reach a period 
when to allow progress in new directions it 
became necessary to strain the excess of car- 
bonic acid from the atmosphere and prepare 
it for the use of air-breathing animals. The 
admission of this fact and the process by which 
relief came is common among geologists and 
evolutionists. All plants and all forms of ani- 
mal life were inhabitants of the waters. The 
atmosphere was surcharged with carbonic 
acid to such a degree that few plants and no 
animals respiring by lungs could exist in it. 
Should it remain thus all orders of life above 
algae among plants and fishes among animals 
would continue apparently forever impossible. 
Then what happened was this: New forms of 
vegetation spread themselves over the saline 



GOD REIGNS 57 



marshes and low lands, over a large part of 
the earth, and for ages decomposed the car- 
bonic acid in the air, leaving the oxygen free, 
and storing away the solid carbon in their own 
structures by the respiratory action of their 
foliage and green surfaces; and these carbon- 
iferous masses became fossilized and were 
stored away in the coal beds of the carbonifer- 
ous period. More highly organized plants 
successively followed; and certain frogs, 
newts and a few insects became the forerun- 
ners of the more perfect races which were to 
breathe the purified air after the coal plants 
had done their preparatory work. 

Was this great change brought about sim- 
ply by the mechanical process of Natural Se- 
lection and adaptation and the law of inherit- 
ance? Haeckel answers in the afl&rmative: 
^' Now, if we look back upon the whole history 
of the development of the vegetable kingdom, 
we cannot but perceive in it," he declares " a 
grand confirmation of the Theory of Descent. 
The two great principles of organic develop- 
ment which have been pointed out as the nec- 
essary results of natural selection in the strug- 
gle for life, namely: the laws of differentiation 



58 GOD REIGNS 



and perfectingy manifest themselves every- 
where in the development of the larger and 
smaller groups of the natural system of plants. 
In each larger or smaller period of the organic 
history of the earth, the vegetable kingdom 
increases both in variety and perfection. 
During the whole of the long primordeal 
period there existed only the lowest and most 
imperfect group, that of the Algae. To these 
are added, in the primary period, the higher 
and more perfect Cryptogamia, especially the 
main class of Ferns. During the coal period 
the Phanerogamia begin to develop out of the 
latter," etc. '' Thus," he concludes, ^^in each 
succeeding later division of the organic history 
of the earth the vegetable kingdom gradually 
rose to a higher degree of perfection and 
variety." [ History of Creation, Volume l, 
page 115.] 

Here Haeckel appeals to a law of ^^perfect- 
ing " as aiding in all these changes. In the 
proper place we shall inquire further into this 
^^higher law" of perfecting : it is sufficient 
here to allude to the fact that Haeckel finds 
it necessary to appeal to this internal agent in 
controling the variability of organisms. And 



GOD REIGNS 



59 



he and other evolutionists, constantly refer to 
this internal element in the modification of 
organisms. It no doubt exists. But it did 
7iot exist in the few original specks of dead 
protoplasm before they were made alive; how 
then, did these determine their own, or the or- 
ganization of their offspring? They could not 
transmit that which they had not. 

But turning more directly again to the puri- 
fication of the air during the coal period : 

When we remember that the whole course 
of nature was changed by this carbonic puri- 
fication; that no creature living in the waters 
could inhabit this new world of dry land with- 
out dispensing with gills and growing a pair 
of lungs, changing his fins to paddles, or wings, 
or legs, and re-adjusting his whole organism 
to a new life, it may be suspected (by those 
who deny the presence of God in all things), 
that here is a case where Tyndall should ad- 
mit that "' a heavenly Father behind natural 
phenomena " had, in a certain degree, changed 
the order of the phenomena. For certainly it 
is beyond the mechanical agency of the 
"struggle for existence," the survival of the 
fittest, organic adaptability and transmission 



6o ' GOD REIGNS 



by inheritance to offspring, to have worked up 
such a disposition to leave the waters for the 
dry land, and to devise or achieve the decar- 
bonization of the air. Having now considered 
the agency of plants in preparing the earth's 
surface for the habitation of more perfect 
plants and of air-breathing animals, we turn 
to consider the mechanical laws of evolution 
(as they are termed), and see if they also do 
not require the intelligent volition of God in 
whom we live, and move and have our being. 
And first, as to that important element in 
evolution which Darwin calls the struggle for 
existence, and that internal power of adapta- 
bility by which organisms conform themselves 
to the changes in their environments, and so 
survive their competitors in the struggle 
who are less able to conform themselves 
to changed conditions, and thus effecting a 
natural selection of improved forms and func- 
tions. Of this Mr. Darwin says: ^^ It may met- 
aphorically be said that Natural Selection is 
daily scrutinizing throughout the world the 
slightest variations; rejecting those that are 
bad, preserving and adding all that are good; 
silently and insensibly working whenever and 



GOD REIGNS 6i 



wherever opportunity offers, at the improve- 
ment of each organic being in relation to or- 
ganic and inorganic conditions of life." [Ori- 
gin of Species, 5th edition, page 96.] 

Attention is called to the declaration in these 
eloquent lines that "nature" is constantly 
striving for betterment. Other evolutionists 
teach the same ; all work together for ad- 
vancement, improvement, a higher good. 
From which it appears, according to the ad- 
mission of evolutionists, that nature — or nat- 
ural laws — or at least the course of evolution, 
tends toward and results in a progressive im- 
provement, greater excellence and higher 
character, in a manner so closely resembling 
what should occur under the beneficent intel- 
ligence of divine power as to make it most rea- 
sonable to conclude that indeed God directed 
the waters "to bring forth abundantly the 
moving creature that hath life." The whole 
course of creation and evolution has proceeded 
as if controlled by intelligent volition, though 
there may have been neither constructive de- 
sign nor anything in the nature of human rea- 
son in the adaptation which has certainly been 
constantly manifested. " God's thoughts are 



62 GOD REIGNS 



not as our thoughts;" and His infinite Order 
and eternal now direct the volitions which be- 
long to himself, and not to the obedient atoms 
which forever work His will. Even Haeckel 
admits a qualified idea of God — "the sublime 
idea of the unity of God and nature." But it 
is noticeable that he assigns no part in the 
creation to God, but gives to "nature" all the 
glory. 

Next in the scheme of evolution, and equal 
in importance with variability in conformity 
with the environment and survival of the fittest, 
is heredity, or " the laws of Transmission by 
Inheritance." The idea involved in the word 
heredity also underlies the phrase applied by 
Moses to plants and animals: " Let the earth 
bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed and 
the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind:' 
5K ^ * a And let the earth bring forth the 
living creature after his kind:' It is that 
physiological law by which an acorn — the seed 
of an oak — always produces an oak, and not 
an apple tree; and by which the offspring of 
a rat is always a rat, and not a rein-deer, or 
some other animal. And one of the chief 
issues between evolutionists and others is as to 



GOD REIGNS 63 



whether these transmissions are limited by 
definite bounds which are never passed, or un- 
limited, so that all forms of organisms have 
come by evolution out of a few primary and 
very simple ones. We have seen that Haeckel 
maintains the latter view and declares that all 
forms have come by '^natural selection," 
^'working without a purpose." And he refers 
to what are known as '' rudimentary organs — 
those exceedingly remarkable structures in 
plants and animals which have no object, and 
which he declares refute every teleological ex- 
planation seeking the final purpose of the or- 
ganism [History of Creation, Volume i, page 
26] ; but which, on the contrary, appear to 
demonstrate that very purpose which he de- 
nies. For, when an organ no longer used 
shrinks away and becomes rudimentary, the 
purpose for which it had existed having failed, 
it would be charging God wath folly did it fail 
to shrink away. When the muscles which 
once moved the human ear are no longer 
needed and are not used, they ought to shrink 
away; they no longer serve a purpose. When 
the eyes of fishes in the darkness of some 
cavern have remained useless and unused for 



64 GOD REIGNS 



many generations, they no longer serve a pur- 
pose, and ought to disappear as they do. 

In further exclusion of God from all com- 
plicity in the evolution of living forms by 
adaptation and heredity, Haeckel declares 
that "where teleological dualism seeks the 
thoughts of a capricious creator in the mira- 
cles of creation, causal monism finds in the 
process of development the necessary effects 
of eternal^ immutable laws of nature J^ [ His- 
tory of Creation, Volume i, page 34.] 

But laws are of themselves nothing but the 
statement of the usual modes of action. And 
if it is meant that these " eternal and immuta- 
ble laws " are active forces, compelling re- 
sults, then the laws are endow^ed with all the 
attributes of God, and compel that wise 
adaptation which is in accordance with the 
highest purpose. And as they act harmon- 
iously and in unison throughout the universe, 
there should be no objection to the acceptance 
of Tyndall's suggestion, and the placing of 
God behind (or within and over) the phe- 
nomena. 

One more declaration of Haeckel, in oppo- 
sition to beneficence in nature and against the 



GOD REIGNS 65 



existence of God, and we leave direct consid- 
eration of the subject of evolution. Haeckel 
says: '' If we contemplate the common life and 
the mental relations between plants and ani- 
mals (man included), we shall find everywhere 
and at all times, the very opposite of that 
kindly and peaceful social life which the good- 
ness of the Creator ought to have prepared 
for his creatures — we shall find everywhere a 
pitiless, most embittered struggle of all against 
all. Nowhere in nature, no matter where we 
turn our eyes, does that idylic peace, cele- 
brated by the poets, exist; we find everywhere 
a struggle and a striving to annihilate neigh- 
bors and competitors. Passion and selfish- 
ness — conscious or unconscious — is every- 
where the motive of life.'^ [History of Crea- 
tion, Volume I, page 19.] 

Is it indeed so? On the contrary, a more 
careful examination will show that this very 
struggle for existence is the proximate source 
of all the pleasures of living. It must be re- 
membered, as taught by Haeckel and all 
evolutionists, that the races of plants and ani- 
mals, in past and present time, are one, con- 
nected in a living and unbroken series from 



66 GOD REIGNS 



their earliest progenitors, so that the present 
races are but projections of the past by un- 
broken fihation, dying at one extremity and 
living at the other. When we consider this, 
then it will be seen that death, the fall of the 
unfittest in the competition for subsistence, 
and the evolution of higher and more complex 
forms of life, bring with them constantly 
widening pleasure and prosperity for the liv- 
ing. The preceding forms constantly disap- 
pear, like unused parts, become superfluous, 
and for the same reason, and are followed by 
a constantly rising and still perfecting pro- 
geny. Not only so, but as death and life are 
necessarily concomitant, the extinction of the 
falling individuals ministers to the welfare of 
the survivors. But not only are the races the 
gainers by this exterminative struggle, but in- 
dividuals also; for by a beneficient provision 
in the condition of all organisms, their high- 
est pleasure comes from the exercise and use 
of their faculties. There is no pleasure, no 
happiness, without this use of the faculties ; 
and in the less elevated forms of sentient or- 
ganisms, the competition, the exertion in 
search of subsistence, the necessary effort to 



GOD REIGNS 67 



maintain existence, and even the struggle 
which ends in death and the extinction of the 
weaker, ministers to the pleasure of the sur- 
vivors j while the suffering of the defeated is 
comparatively brief and only the hastening of 
that death which is under all conditions inev- 
itable. And if, as has been said, ^^ there is 
nothing of which nature is so prodigal as life," 
so also is there nothing which she scatters 
abroad with so lavish and generous a hand. 
In the more advanced orders, and especially 
among mankind, the great and unending 
struggle has wrought out a code of ethics and 
made it inherent in the organism, in which 
love, and justice, and righteousness find their 
happiest manifestation, and toward which the 
race of mankind is advancing under that 
struggle which Haeckel declares to be '^every- 
where a pitiless, most embittered stricggle of 
all against all,'^ and are beginning to "beat 
their swords into ploughshares and their 
spears into pruning-hooks/' 



68 GOD REIGNS 



SERMON V. 

'' The Lord is good to all ; and his tender 
mercies are over all his works." — Psalms, 
cxLV, g. 

It has been pointed out in previous dis- 
courses that teachers of science — both those 
who acknowledge God and those who do not 
— declare that there is in nature a constant 
progress toward improvement, and a better 
condition of both plants and animals — most 
summarily expressed in the words of Matthew 
Arnold, that there prevails '^ a power that 
makes for righteousness." Let us see if it 
may not as truly be said that there is a power 
that makes for happiness ^ 

In the ninth chapter of '^ The Data of 
Ethics," Mr. Spencer has illustrated the fact 
that in the life of all organisms pleasure and 
the use or exercise of the faculties have from 
the first been evolved together. The extract 
is not a brief one, but should be given entire : 

" During evolution there has been a super- 



GOD REIGNS 69 



posing of the pleasures accompanying the 
uses of these successive sets of means ; with 
the result that each of these pleasures has 
itself eventually become an end. We begin 
with a simple animal which, without ancillary 
appliances, swallows such food as accident 
brings in its way ; and so, as we may assume, 
stills some kind of craving. Here we have the 
primary end of nutritition with its accom- 
panying satisfaction, in their simple form. 
We pass to higher types having jaws for 
seizing and biting — jaws which thus, by their 
actions, facilitate achievement of the primary 
end. On observing animals furnished with 
these organs, we get evidence that the use of 
them becomes in itself pleasurable irrespec- 
tive of the end : instance a squirrel, which, 
apart from food to be so obtained, delights in 
nibbling everything it gets hold of. Turning 
from jaws to limbs we see that these, serving 
some creatures for pursuit and others for es- 
cape, similarly yield gratification by their ex- 
ercise ; as in lambs, which skip, and horses 
which prance. How the combined use of 
limbs and jaws, originally subserving the sat- 
isfaction of appetite, grows to be in kself 



70 GOD REIGNS 



pleasurable, is daily illustrated in the playing 
of dogs. For that throwing down and worry- 
ing which, when prey is caught, precedes 
eating, is, in their mimic fights, carried by 
each as far as he dares. Coming to means 
still more remote from the end, namely, those 
by which creatures chased are caught, we are 
again shown by dogs that when no creature is 
caught there is still a gratification in the act 
of catching. The eagerness with which a 
dog runs after stones, or dances and barks in 
anticipation of jumping into the water after a 
stick, proves that apart from the satisfaction 
of appetite, and apart even from the satisfac- 
tion of killing prey, there is a satisfaction in 
the successful pursuit of a moving object. 
Throughout, then, we see that the pleasure 
attending on the use of means to achieve an 
end, itself becomes an end." 

Now why should the coming of additional 
organs and functions, with the accompanying 
appetency for their exercise, invariably include 
a superadded pleasure ? To insure the taking 
of food for the sustenance of the animal, ap- 
petite — hunger — appears to be of itself wholly 
sufficient. All the functions of the animal 



GOD REIGNS 71 



economy which are in any way under the con- 
trol of voHtion involve an impulse, a disposi- 
tion, a desire toward the use of the organs 
upon which they depend, which appears to be 
not at all dependent upon the accompany- 
ing pleasure or satisfaction. And the law 
of exercise or use of each organ or fac- 
ulty, is, that while that is insured by an im- 
pulse or desire, the action itself is pleas- 
urable. Is not that a beneficent law ? And 
is that which is called Nature ( apart from 
God ) beneficent ? Does that comprehensive 
doctrine of the Correlation of Forces include 
love as one of its correlates? Then indeed 
must we refer all modes of force and all ex- 
pressions of energy back to God, "whose 
tender mercies are over all his works ; " for 
it would appear that no mind which has not 
been debauched by a vain philosophy, can 
conceive of gravitation, or any correlated 
mode of pressure or traction, filling a world 
with gratuitous loving-kindness. 

When we rise above the races nearest to 
man in multiplicity of functions and their con- 
comitant pleasures, and consider man himself, 
we find that in him not only are those social 



72 GOD REIGNS 



affections common to both, more useful in 
character and more loaded with gratuitous 
pleasures, but we find also that many func- 
tions which are comparatively rudimentary in 
animals have been so exalted in man as to but 
little resemble those out of which, we are 
taught, they have arisen. And moreover, 
man possesses functions which are scarcely if 
at all to be found in the lower animals. Let 
us consider some of these — using for defini- 
tions the names suggested by Dr. Spurzheim : 
I. The Reflecting Faculties, Comparison 
and Causality, which manifest the function of 
reason or ratiocination — the first determining 
relations, and the second considering their 
dependencies. What a wonderful system of 
co-ordinated organs and faculties minister to 
these reasoning powers ! Senses that bring 
them reports from without, and perceptions 
which compound these into the data of reason- 
ing within. Eyes that over and above the 
perception of light and shade, which alone 
appears sufficient for the vision of form and 
movement, but which have super-added no- 
tations of color, full of delights ; ears which 
not only have the sense of sound, but bring 



GOD REIGNS 73 



US " the sweet music of speech " and all the 
harmonies of string and reed, and organ-pipe 
— exquisite gifts of Beneficence not at all 
needful to the acutest hearing ; taste, that 
charms the tongue and palate with countless 
sweets — superfluous, but for the free gift of 
loving kindness, where appetite and hunger 
alone were sufficient ; and all the unnamed 
delights of the other senses, manifestly not es- 
sential to their specific functions : all these 
reporting the outer world to the inner facul- 
ties of perception, then on to the reflecting 
faculties for ratiocination. 

And as to the Reflecting faculties them- 
selves : it might be conceded that in their 
special function there is no proof of love in 
their office ; for if man is to dominate all ani- 
mals, to inhabit all climes, to fit himself to all 
environments, to guide and determine his own 
evolution and elevation, and compel the povv^- 
ers of nature to do his will, he must possess 
very high abilities as a reasoner. But a divine 
love has lighted the pathway where his reason 
moves ; the very act of reasoning is full of 
gratification ; and in its exercise man has sub- 
dued the earth to his use ; he has organized 



74 GOD REIGNS 



the production and distribution of food and 
raiment, fenced out the storms of winter, filled 
his habitation with artificial warmth and com- 
pelled the elements to minister to his happi- 
ness. Prof. Haeckel thinks all these things 
are the result of mechanical evolution, not 
only without beneficent design, but without 
any intelligent purpose whatever. We prefer 
to look upon them and to receive them as the 
results of a 'kind Father's loving kindness, 
wrought out by his own laws of evolution. 

2. But higher, more noble and more God- 
like than the reasoning faculties is Benevo- 
lence — the sentiment which gives us happi- 
ness in making others happy. It is not 
necessary to debate the question as to whether 
this impulse of benevolence is wholly unsel- 
fish. Its exercise gives to him who feels it 
the most exalted happiness, and is, no doubt, 
so far selfish ; but its specific object is the 
welfare of others ; and the enjoyment which 
accompanies the manifestation of love toward 
others is superadded, and not needful to the 
end, which is the welfare of others ; for an 
impulse wholly void of gratification in the be- 
nevolent would suffice. It is only within com- 



GOD REIGNS 75 



paratively recent times, and in the most highly 
developed nations that this sentiment of Be- 
nevolence has become a dominating trait j and 
in the history of the race but One alone has 
reached complete fullness in the sentiment 
and practice of unselfish and unconditional 
love toward all men : Jesus, the Nazarene. 
But his spirit, his teachings and his deeds 
now animate thousands, among ''believers''' 
and among unbelievers in the Christian 
church. And Shakespeare in his day knew 
the re-acting power of love and mercy, which 
come back in compound interest to the mer- 
ciful. He makes Portia say to shylock : 

" The quality of mercy is not strained ; 
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
Upon the place beneath ; it is twice bless'd ; 
It blesseth him who gives and him who takes." 

And it is so with every act of unconditional 
benevolence ; it blesses him that gives and 
him that takes. If material atoms organized 
by unconscious natural laws may evolve such 
results as these, then are material atoms and 
natural law^s most God-like : let us rise above 
these to God himself. . 

3. Conscientiousness : The feeling of right 



76 GOD REIGNS 



and wrong ; of duty ; of ought and ought not ; 
which when disobeyed and outraged induces 
a sense of guilt, and when obeyed is accom- 
panied with satisfaction in a degree co-equal 
with the sacrifice involved. This sentiment 
is not the same as that last considered. Many 
persons possess it in a high degree who have 
little benevolent feeling j and the existence of 
a strong emotion of unselfish love toward 
others with at the same time a dull sense of 
justice is a remarkable feature of the present 
age. Large numbers of dishonest people are 
found who have little or no sense of guiltiness 
for wrong, and yet whose outflowing benevo- 
lence is a leading motive of character. And on 
the other hand, there are many of those whose 
exact justice is unquestionable, but to whom 
the sentiment of disinterested benevolence 
and acts of spontaneous kindness are 
strangers. 

The beneficent effect of justice toward oth- 
ers requires no proof ; but that this disposi- 
sition is not a mere social impulse for the good 
of the race by action towards others, but is 
accompanied with a profound satisfaction in 
the exercise of the conscientious sentiment, 



GOD REIGNS 77 



indicates beneficent purpose or end, in the 
origin of the emotion. 

The prophet Micah appears to have had a 
clear view of the distinction between this 
emotion of justice and that of benevolence, 
when he inquires : " What doth thy God re- 
quire of thee but to do justly, and to love 
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God." 
[Micah VI, 8]. 

4. Marvelousness : Wonder — Faith — 
Spirituality — Superstition ; the sentiment is 
known by all these names. Its specific func- 
tion is difficult to determine ; but it has shown 
itself among all peoples and in all ages. It is 
not only unreasoning, but it is scarcely at all 
under the control of reason when manifested 
in fetichism, sorcery, charms, ghosts and a 
hundred forms of superstition among the ig- 
norant. It gives the feeling of the super- 
natural ; and it persists as some such feeling 
against all reason among many otherwise in- 
telligent people. In its higher development 
it appears as the feeling of superstition, or of 
unreasonable faith as distinguished from in- 
telligent belief and trust, based upon the 
intuition of the unseen. And joined with the 



78 GOD REIGNS 



next sentiment to be considered — veneration 
— is the basis of the God-sentiment, which in 
some form or degree is found among all peo- 
ples. Paul, in his address to the Athenians, 
says : "■ Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in 
all things ye are too superstitious" [ or some- 
what superstitious or religious^ in the margin.] 
for as I passed by and beheld your devotions, 
I found an altar with this inscription : ' To 
the unknown God ! ' Whom, therefore, ye ig- 
noranfly worship, him declare I unto you." 
[Acts, XXII, 23 — Revised version]. 

And the apostle said this as if fully aware 
that the basal element of superstition and of 
enlightened faith is the same. At any rate, 
there can be no doubt of the widespread ex- 
istence of this feeling, call it what we may. 
Now what is it ? Can mechanical evolution 
have elevated a sentiment which relates to 
nothing ? Hardly. And as this profound and 
inextinguishable feeling leads always to some 
form or degree of theism, reasonable men will 
^^ seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after 
him, though he be not far from every one 
of us." 

5. Veneration: This is the last of the 



GOD REIGNS 79 



sentiments named by Dr. Spurzheim demand- 
ing special attention in the scheme of these dis- 
courses. Literally, it is the sentiment or 
emotion of worship, and being blind — having 
in itself no element of knowledge — its mani- 
festation and direction have ahvays been and 
must be, according to the intelligence of the 
worshipper, base and cruel and groundless 
superstition in one, and the reverent uplifting 
of thankful devotion toward all-loving God in 
another. 

Leaving all attempt to prove the existence 
of this sentiment, which is and has always been 
as common to mankind as hunger or thirst, 
there remains the question : Is its growth 
among men beneficent ? It has been evolved 
and perfected under the same law of better- 
ment with all other functions, and appears to 
relate properly only to that Infinite Love and 
Wisdom which has ever been the thread of 
unity, power and beneficent progress, and un- 
der whose cor^trol " all things make for right- 
eousness." Whether its development in its 
highest estate is an individual good depends 
upon the individual ; just as in music, poetry, 
art, and the entire sum of the aesthetic, the 



8o GOD REIGNS 



good is as the individual who is able to re- 
ceive it. '' And they are elevated in the scale 
of manhood, humanity, and all that is virtu- 
ous and ennobling, in proportion as they ap- 
proach the worship of the God of Love," and 
imitate his never failing loving kindness. 




GOD REIGNS 



SERMON VI. 

" And we know that all things work together 
for good to them that love God." — Romans, 
VIII, 28. 

In whatever restricted sense Paul may have 
used the words which indicate the theme of 
this discourse, they are no doubt true in the 
broadest sense. But to love God in the 
broadest sense is to love his creatures, and 
especially to love our fellow men. And our 
relation to them and other sentient beings, 
and to the whole realm of nature, is such that 
our own welfare depends upon conformity 
with and obedience to all physical, physiolog- 
ical, social and moral laws affecting us. 
Strictly, then, to love God is to seek conform- 
ity with his will, whereby '' all things work 
together for good." And it is interesting to 
find that good^ for which all things work to- 
gether, is so related to the love of others — 
men and animals — as to be the basis of moral- 
ity, not only in the purest religious systems 



82 GOD REIGNS 



and in the experience of mankind, but in that 
scientific system so carefully deduced by Mr. 
Herbert Spencer from the history of mankind 
under the influence of evolution. In the third 
chapter of '^The Data of Ethics," after exam- 
ing the relation of special virtues to human 
happiness, he says : '^ Unless it is asserted 
that courage and chastity could still be thought 
of as virtues though thus productive of misery, 
it must be admitted that the conception of 
virtue cannot be separated from the conception 
of happiness-producing conduct ; and that as 
this holds of all the virtues, however other- 
wise unlike, it is from their conduciveness to 
happiness that they come to be classed as vir- 
tues." And he concludes the chapter with these 
words : " So that no school can avoid taking 
for the ultimate moral aim a desirable state of 
feeling called by whatever name — gratification, 
enjoyment, happiness. Pleasure somewhere, 
at some time, to some being or beings, is an 
inexpungable element of the conception. It 
is as much a necessary form of moral intuition 
as space is a necessary form of intellectual in- 
tuition." 

This treatise upon the data of ethics as they 



GOD REIGNS 83 



have been unfolded in the history of the race 
has been seriously considered by many per- 
sons as dangerous to established doctrines of 
virtue. But Mr. Spencer expressly declares 
at the close of his second chapter, after stat- 
ing the implications which he finds in evolu- 
tion : " These implications of the Evolution 
Hypothesis, we shall now see harmonize with 
the leading moral ideas men have otherwise 
reached." 

The religious doctrines taught by Paul, 
the experience of mankind and the deduc- 
tions of science, then, all agree that to 
the loving and the obedient all things work 
together for good. It should follow that he 
who is best — most loving and most obe- 
dient to duty, all things considered — is hap- 
piest. And it appears to have been in this 
sense that Paul spoke when he declared that 
the good which results from the working to- 
gether of all things should come to '' them 
who love God ; " for although a Jew, brought 
up at the feet of Gamaliel, under the Mosaic 
system which demanded obedience and the 
love of God as the sole end, and not for the 
sake of the loving and the obedient, Paul in 



GOD REIGNS 



his discourse to the Athenians says : '^ God 
that made the world and all things therein, 
seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, 
dwelleth not in temples made with hands ; 
neither is worshipped with men's hands, as 
though he needed anything, seeing he giveth 
to all life, and breath, and all things." [Acts, 
XVII, 24, 25]. 

We are then to consider the love toward 
God as being love toward his sentient crea- 
tures and obedient conformity to his laws. 

No one who comprehends this law of love 
and has its spirit wrought into his emotional 
nature will " needlessly set foot upon a worm." 
For, if '^ not a sparrow shall fall on the ground 
without your Father," as Jesus told his fol- 
lowers, *^ who giveth food to the young ravens 
when they cry," so should every sentient 
creature within our reach have the good will 
of men, consistently with their own welfare. 
The earth is not (as held by many) for man 
alone ; but for every creature in his order. 
For long ages the vegetable kingdom and the 
lowest forms of animated beings possessed 
the earth, and only very slowly and gradually 
gave place to higher organisms capable of en- 



GOD REIGNS 85 



joying more. In that struggle for existence 
which we are assured has been and still is tlie 
law which brings the betterment of animals 
and men, mankind are entitled, equally with 
the beasts, to the benefit of the law, each in 
proportion to his fitness ; and man may there- 
fore subdue or exterminate his noxious in- 
feriors, as these do their's \ but the higher 
development of his intellectual and moral 
powers demands that man should extend his 
kindly feeling to all his inferiors, as well as 
toward his fellow men. 

'' But why should a noisome toad have been 
created ? " inquires one ; ^^ why should rats or 
lizards or serpents exist ? " asks another ; the 
answer is — that they may enjoy their lives. 
If they enter into the great struggle with man, 
they must perish \ but their wanton destruc- 
tion is cruel. And among higher animals " a 
righteous man regardeth the life of his beast," 
and — 

" He prayeth best who loveth best 
All things both great and small ; 
For the dear God who loveth us, 
He made and loveth all." 

And that love has been so inwrought with our 



86 GOD REIGNS 



own moral nature that its exercise results in a 
consequent good to ourselves. And here 
arises an important question : Are we to be 
guided in the exercise of conscientiousness 
and benevolence alone by the promptings of 
the emotions ? or should these unreasoning 
sentiments of justice and love be put under 
rule, like other emotions ? 

Treating of benevolence in a preceding dis- 
course, it was pointed out that this was blind, 
like all emotions, and demanded the guidance 
of the reasoning powers. It follows that as 
men differ widely in that regard, and as even 
very intelligent reasoners have differed among 
themselves as to what are the just prompt- 
ings of reason concerning the ethical conduct 
demanded of us, we should, if possible, have 
a moral code to which the intelligent and the 
good have joined in their approval. And 
while no one's conscience can be justly held 
to ethical rules made by others, in the mani- 
festation of his moral attributes, yet his acts 
as towards others may, no doubt, be required 
to harmonize with the consentaneous judg- 
ment and experience of mankind, whenever 
he comes into practical relations with them. 



GOD REIGNS 87 



Such codes, written or unwritten, appear to 
have existed among people well advanced in 
civilization in all ages. And it is worthy of 
remark that the code promulgated to the Jews 
near three thousand and four hundred years 
ago by their great law-giver, Moses, is to this 
day the basis of, and almost identical with, 
that now in vogue among the most enlightened 
and humane nations everywhere. That code 
has had the test of very long experience ; and 
omitting such portions as were special to the 
Jews, must ever remain the standard, because 
it harmonizes with the co?istitutio?i of man. 

It will be noted also that in the Command- 
ments as given by Moses, no appeal is made 
to the higher nature of men, for very few in 
that day were in such a condition of enlighten- 
ment as to be able to respond to such an ap- 
peal j and Moses wisely appeals only to the 
hope of reward and the fear of punishment : 
'' visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the 
children unto the third and fourth genera- 
tion," and ^^ showing mercy unto thousands" 
of them that keep the Commandments. Did 
Moses understand the law of heredity? He 
evidently knew many things which are not 



GOD REIGNS 



commonly set down to his intelligence. He 
evidently knew the necessity of rest for man 
and beast ; and in commanding Sabbath ob- 
servance, after including therein the son, the 
daughter, the man-servant, the maid-servant, 
the ox, the ass and the stranger within the 
gates, he adds: "That the man-servant and 
the maid-servant may rest as well as thou, 
and remember that thou wast a servant in the 
land of Egypt." [Deut. ix, 6.] Even the 
Mosaic Sabbath, then (as was said by Jesus 
afterward), "was made for man, and not man 
for the. Sabbath." 

The more the teachings of the Jewish law- 
giver are examined in connection with the 
condition of his people, so recently "come out 
of bondage" with no settled belief on theisti- 
cal or ethical subjects, and full of idolatrous 
prejudice, the clearer it will be seen that in 
teaching them monotheism to drive out their 
degrading idolatries, he was compelled to 
sanction the anthropomorphizing of God, and 
to permit them to conceive of a being of 
bodily shape with like passions as themselves; 
for they could conceive of no other. Let us 
be worthy of an age in which, instead of wor- 



GOD REIGNS 



shipping a man-like God, we are permitted to 
approach more and more toward the charac- 
ter of God-like men: we may advance in love 
toward our fellow men; and God is Love. 

May there not be still another side to the 
statement that " all things work together for 
good to them who love God;" that conform to 
his laws. Do they work together for evil to 
them who violate the law of their being — that 
is, who do not love God? The constitution of 
man and his relation to the laws which con- 
trol his existence compel an answer in the 
affirmative ; and the Mosaic requirement of 
^^Obey and live" is only the absolute expres- 
sion of this truth; for it is only by conforming 
to the harmonious relation between our own 
constitution and those natural laws to which 
we are subject that good to ourselves and 
others is to be secured. But there is a wide- 
spread belief, even among intelligent persons, 
that the natural laws are sometimes con- 
strained by divine power to work together out 
of their accustomed order for the good of the 
obedient and for punishment of the disobe- 
dient. But Paul does not promise that all 
things shall be controlled together for good by 



go GOD REIGNS 



an interference in behalf of them who love 
God; the statement of Paul implies that in 
accordance with the usual and unvarying 
order of events, all things do so work together 
for good. Nor will obedience to some ot the 
laws of our being and a neglect to obey others 
secure the promised good. Jesus said to the 
people assembled on the mount: " Not every 
one that saith ' Lord, Lord/ shall enter into 
the kingdom of heaven, but him that doeth 
the will of my Father." At another time he 
said: ^^ Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, 
hypocrites; for ye pay tithes of mint and 
anise and cummin, and have omitted the 
weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy 
and faith." 

But if no natural law (which is God's law) 
is ever distorted from its usual course that it 
may work together with all things for the 
good of the obedient, neither is the law turned 
aside for the punishment of evil-doers. The 
divine attributes considered in the first of this 
series of discourses clearly indicate that God 
can never find it necessary to violate his own 
laws; for knowing all things from the begin- 
ning, being immanent in all phenomena, and 



GOD REIGNS 91 



controlling harmoniously all things by the 
counsel of His will, a change of purpose or 
the suspension or turning aside of any of his 
laws is inconceivable. There can be no ^^special 
providence," for the divine government is at 
all times both special and general, with no 
variableness, "neither shadow of turning." 

Summarizing what has gone before in this 
discourse, we have the following proposi- 
tions — 

1. They "who love God," and for whom it 
is said all things work together for good, are 
those who manifest godliness — God-likeness, 
in that they obey His laws and love His 
creatures. 

2. The working together of all things is 
not altered in behalf of such as are to receive 
the good, but these must harmoniously work 
together with all things. 

3. Neither is there any change for the pun- 
ishment of the unloving and disobedient; 
who miss the good from failure to conform to 
its conditions. 

These conclusions harmonize with that lov- 
ing consciousness defined in the first of these 
discourses as God \ with the experience of 



92 GOD REIGNS 



mankind in all ages; and with that far-reach- 
ing doctrine of science termed Evolution, 
many of whose disciples were at first so 
blinded by the light of the new revelation as 
to believe that at last a way was found by 
which the universe and all its phenomena may 
exist without God. But the reaction has be- 
gun. Already many are wavering, and one 
who stands among the highest declares that 
^^it is no departure from scientific method to 
place behind natural phenomena a universal 
Father." Had he said amid, in and through 
all phenomena, the conception would have 
been complete. For the universe is not an 
infinite machine, wound up to run forever, but 
an orderly government under the reign of con- 
scious power, by which, in which and through 
which all things work together for good. 
There is no readjustment of parts, for all parts 
are always right; no re-arranged plans, for the 
end is known from the beginning; no cata- 
clysms, for order reigns everywhere and at all 
times; no ^^ special providences," for the 
providence of God is universal and not sub- 
ject to exceptions; and no possible variable- 
ness nor shadow of turning at any time. For 



GOD REIGNS 93 



God is self-existent, comprehending all exist- 
ence ; infinite as His universe and compre- 
hending all its parts ; without personal form 
to be conceived by finite minds, but having a 
personality in his intelligent volition and His 
Fatherly love; and of infinite order in the suc- 
cession of all phenomena, which are but His 
manifest volitions. 

Nor is it to be understood as here taught, 
that God is a mere all-pervading energy, like 
gravitation, working blindly in consecutive 
phenomena, without volition; but that He is a 
being comprehensive of all being, who " is 
before all things, and by him all things con- 
sist." 

Blessed he who rests in confidence on this 
loving Father, and is able at all times to ex- 
claim, as did Hagar in the wilderness: "Thou 
God seest me !" 




94 GOD REIGNS 



SERMON VII. 

'^ He hath showed thee, O man, what is good, 
and what doth the Lord require of thee, but 
to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk 
humbly with thy God." — Micah vi, 8. 

It is now proposed to consider in their order 
the three closely co-ordinated sentiments before 
noted as Conscientiousness, Benevolence and 
Veneration, concurrently with that of Marvel- 
ousness, in the latter of which has arisen the 
^^ intuition of divinity," called by Herbert 
Spencer '^the ghost theory." 

And first of Conscientiousness, from which 
come the sense of the obligation to be just, 
the feeling of rightness and the aversion to 
wrong conduct toward others. It rests on a 
reciprocity between parties, by which the act 
of one demands an equal return from the 
other, in which it is unlike Benevolence, which 
demands no return, though both are neces- 
sarily elements of social life. 

Justice, the direct outcome of this senti- 



GOD REIGNS 95 



ment, implying as it does an obligation and 
equivalent return, appears to be not at all pre- 
dicable of any possible relation between God 
and man; as there can be no obligation upon 
the one side and no equivalent return on the 
other, seeing that God is Lord of heaven and 
earth, dwelleth not in temples made with 
hands ; neither is worshipped wath men's 
hands, as though he needed anything, seeing 
that he giveth to all life, and breath and all 
things." 

There are reciprocal relations of love and 
worship between God and man; but these are 
not relations of justice, springing as they do, 
out of divine love toward man, and admitting 
no return for his loving-kindness but love 
toward our fellow men, and a loving reverence 
toward God, not for His demand, but for our 
happiness. 

The statement that there can be no relations 
of justice between God and man is startling 
to many devout persons. But consider it. 
Justice is based upon equivalency. But, in 
words of the well known hymn, 

" What shall I render to my God 
For all His gifts to me ?" 



96 GOD REIGNS 



Nothing — absolutely nothing. What shall 
the rolling worlds which are everywhere 
careering through space render to the Law of 
Gravitation? Nothing but obedience. And 
obedience is the sole return that God's reason- 
ing creatures can render for all his loving- 
kindness; and even this obedience results not 
in a re-payment to the Ruler on a basis of 
justice, but only in increase of happiness to 
the obedient. 

Abraham, touching the destruction of So- 
dom, is represented as inquiring: '' Shall not 
the Judge of all the earth do right?" And they 
who hold that there are relations of justice be- 
tween God and man repeat the same inquiry 
to-day. Undoubtedly He will. But let us 
distinguish between justice and the doing of 
that which is right, when there are no mutual 
obligations. Abstract, absolute rightfulness 
exists with God alone. With man the right 
and the wrong are conditional; with God there 
can be no conditions. With him might and 
right are one. By these he overthrew Sodom 
and Gomorrah, and he has since overthrown 
numerous cities with earthquake and storm ; 
He has swept from the ancient ocean the 



GOD REIGNS 97 



untold millions of dead which he fossilized in 
the now rocky sediment; and He is at this 
hour decimating the population of the earth 
in death, regardless of all distinction between 
the evil and the good. All this is right be- 
cause God does it; and were our vision as 
broad as His and our knowledge infinite, we 
should see that it is also all right in itself. 

This human sentiment of Conscientiousness, 
then, has regard only to the social relations of 
mankind. It is not necessary here to con- 
sider the wide extent of its influence, remem- 
bering, however, that it relates to all volun- 
tary actions which can be right or wrongs and 
especially to reciprocal rights and duties. 

Mr. Spencer in The Data of Ethics (quot- 
ing a former letter of his on the subject), 
gives us this account on the rise of the moral 
sentiments in the race: "I believe that the 
experiences of utility organized and consoli- 
dated through all past generations of the hu- 
man race, have been producing corresponding 
nervous modifications which, by continued 
transmission and accumulation, have become 
in us certain faculties of moral intuition — cer- 
tain emotions responding to right and wrong 



98 GOD REIGNS 



conduct, which have no apparent basis in the 
individual experiences of utihty." There can, 
perhaps, be httle doubt that this account of 
the rise of the moral sentiments is historically 
correct, for the savage and the barbarous races 
manifest them only in proportion to their ele- 
vation in the scale of civilization; that is, as 
man needed them more, they arose in his or- 
ganization and became manifest in his moral 
nature. But it will be difficult for one who is 
untrammeled by a scientific regime to believe 
that this rise of the emotion of justice and 
right, and the conscientious repugnance to in- 
justice and wrong, was the result solely of the 
necessities of men in their social relations, 
without the guiding control of the All-Good. 
Men without any active sense or emotion of 
justice may be forcibly compelled by their 
fellow men to act justly; but this compulsion 
does not awaken in the unwilling man an 
emotion of justice. And in the same manner 
men in society might have been — nay, must 
have been — compelled by their mutual rela- 
tions, without the accompanying sentiment, or 
any awakening of a corresponding conscien- 
tious disposition to do right for its own sake. 



GOD REIGNS gg 



This sentiment of conscientiousness is the 
basis of the most profound emotion of which 
man is capable. But hke all modes of emo- 
tion it is blind ; it does not know — it only 
feels; and hence it cannot alone give any rule 
of right or wrong. Under a blind impulse of 
duty unenlightened by the intellect, men have 
committed the most heinous deeds of wrong 
toward each other in the name of justice; and 
it is only after they have risen to a more ele- 
vated conception of God that they become 
aware that no relations of justice can exist 
with him. Ignorant of this, even Paul, subse- 
quently the Christian apostle, declares that in 
zeal toward God he had persecuted Christians 
unto death. 

The ruder races, and individuals in the most 
enlightened ones, imagine that God may be 
propitiated; that sacrifices are acceptable to 
him; that he demands a return for all blessings 
conferred, " as though he needed anything;" 
that they must do something for God, who has 
done so much for them. But Samuel, the 
prophet, said unto Saul: *^ Behold, to obey 
is better than sacrifice." And in Proverbs 
it is said; "To do justice and judgment is 



GOD REIGNS 



more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.'' 
Conscientiousness, then, is an emotion which 
prompts to justice among men in society ; to 
acts of righteousness and the avoidance of all 
that the enlightened intellect discovers to be 
wrong. It is therefore a principal element in 
the religious emotions, giving that controlling 
sense of duty which results in a happy satis- 
faction when obeyed, and in painful feelings 
of guilt and remorse when disobeyed. 

Mr. Spencer, in reconciling conflicting ethi- 
cal theories, says: "That happiness is the 
supreme end is beyond question true; for this 
is the concomitant of that higher life which 
every theory of moral guidance has distinctly 
or vaguely in view;" and he declares that the 
moral sentiments as guides " are proximately 
supreme solely because they lead to the ulti- 
mately supreme end, happiness, special and 
general." So that by the laws and progress 
of "Evolution" it is shown that the supreme 
end of life is the happiness of the living. 

But Mr. Spencer is far from admitting (how- 
ever he may believe), that a divine Will and 
an infinite Love so control the evolution of 
sentient creatures as to secure that supreme 



GOD REIGNS 



end. ^^ If for the divine Will," he says, sup- 
posed to be supernaturally revealed, we sub- 
stitute the naturally revealed end toward 
which the Power (the capital P is his) mani- 
fested throughout Evolution works ; then, 
since Evolution has been and is still working 
toward the highest life, it follows that con- 
forming to those principles by which the high- 
est life is achieved, is furthering that end." 
[Data of Ethics, § 62.] 

This appears to be an example in which the 
name of God is purposely avoided in alluding 
to the " Power through which Evolution 
works" in conformity with the established 
custom among certain teachers of science, of 
ignoring God. ^^The Power through which 
Evolution works " is God \ and it required 
some ingenuity to speak of his controlling 
will without calling his name. 

From what has been said, then (and in this 
agnostic scientists concur), the Sentiment of 
Conscientiousness relates wholly to men in their 
social state. It is only in conjoint action with 
Veneration that the feeling of duty toward 
God arises ; but as even this sentiment of 
adoration, like all feelings, has the happiness 



102 GOD REIGNS 



of the worshipper as its end, its manifestation 
can have no obligatory relation toward God. 
He who never lifts his heart toward God in 
profound veneration is himself the only loser. 
Mr. Spencer (and others less elaborately) 
has traced the rise and evolution of this pre- 
eminent emotion among men in society. Sum- 
ming up his conclusions in the letter quoted 
above, and afterwards referring to this sum- 
mary, he says: '^Conscientiousness has in 
many out-grown that stage in which the sense 
of a compelling power is joined with rectitude 
of action. The truly honest man, here and 
there to be found, is not only without thought 
of legal, religious or social compulsion, when 
he discharges an equitable claim on him ; but 
he is without thought of self-compulsion. He 
does the right thing with a simple feeling of 
satisfaction in doing it; and is, indeed, impa- 
tient if anything prevents him from having 
the satisfaction of doing it," [Data of Ethics, 

§ 46.] 

Now, all this relates to the sentiment of 
moral obligation. But Mr. Spencer also at- 
tempts to account for the rise and evolution 
of the happy satisfaction which accompanies 



GOD REIGNS 103 



the manifestation of the moral sentiment — as 
of all the feelings. His conclusion is: ^' Those 
races of beings only can have survived in 
which, on the average, agreeable or desired 
feelings went along with activities conducive 
to the maintenance of life, while disagreeable 
and habitually avoided feelings went along 
with activities directly or indirectly destructive 
of life; and there must ever have been, other 
things equal, the most numerous and long- 
continued survivals among races in which 
these adjustments of feelings to actions were 
the best, tending ever to bring about perfect 
adjustment." [Data of Ethics, § 33.] The 
manifest result of which is, that when life can 
no longer be enjoyed, it ceases. But why is 
satisfaction — pleasure — happiness the very 
sine qua non of life? And how does the con- 
sciousness of it ^^ arise?" On this point Prof. 
Tyndall says in the Belfast address : " We 
can trace the development of a nervous sys- 
tem, and correlate with it the parallel phe- 
nomena of sensation and thought. We see 
with undoubting certainty that they go hand 
in hand. But we try to soar in a vacuum the 
moment we seek to comprehend the connec- 



I04 GOD REIGNS 



tion between them. ^ -^ ^ ^n that has 
been here said is to be taken in connection 
with this fundamental truth. When ^nascent 
senses ' are spoken of, when the ' differentia- 
tion of a tissue at first vaguely sensitive all 
over ' is spoken of, and when these processes 
are associated with ^the modification of an or- 
ganism by its environment,' the same parallel- 
ism without contact is implied. There is no 
fusion possible between the two classes of 
facts — no motor energy in the intellect of man 
to carry it without logical rupture from one to 
the others This is a most important and 
very candid statement ; and will again be re- 
ferred to. 

Herbert Spencer, touching the same matter, 
says : '' Without questioning that the raw 
material of consciousness is present even in 
indifferentiated protoplasm, and everywhere 
exists potentially in that Unknowable Power 
which, otherwise conditioned, is manifested in 
physical action, I demur to the conclusion 
that it at first exists (in the simplest organ- 
isms) under the forms of pleasure and pain." 
[Note to § 33, Data of Ethics.] 

The whole sentient world is constituted on 



GOD REIGNS 105 



the necessity of happiness in some form or de- 
gree to the persistence of life ; and the only 
deference which Mr. Spencer — the most 
voluminous writer of the age — can find space 
to offer that ^^ Unknowable Power" which or- 
dains life and happiness together, is to refer 
to it in capital letters. The rise and essence 
of all degrees of feeling and of consciousness 
(except historically) are "unknowable" (as 
admitted by Tyndall) \ but writers (including 
Herbert Spencer) among the ablest scientists, 
do not on that account hesitate to treat at 
great length on the work of that unknowable 
power. Even Professor Haeckel admits the 
existence of an inscrutable "perfecting power" 
by which all living creatures are being "im- 
proved;" and Professor Tyndall, as has been 
shown, while declaring that " the whole pro- 
cess of evolution is the manifestation of a 
Power absolutely inscrutable," and that con- 
sidered fundamentally, it is by the operation 
of an insoluable mystery that life is evolved, 
species differentiated and mind unfolded from 
their preponent elements in the immeasure- 
able past," declares nevertheless that "pro- 
longing the vision backward across the bound- 



io6 GOD REIGNS 



ary of the experimental evidence," he discerns 
in matter ^^ the promise and potency of every 
form and quality of life." 

Now, in treating so widely and wisely of the 
"• Power '* which has controlled " the whole 
process of evolution," why do so many writers 
utterly ignore God ? It would hardly be pre- 
sumption if some devout Paul should say to 
them : " Him declare I unto you !" They 
consider the mysterious Ether, the existence 
of which is an unproved hypothesis, give it a 
name and laboriously trace its office in the 
universe. They build an entire system of 
philosophy upon Gravity, known to them solely 
by its effects. And yet, when speaking of the 
Infinite Unity by which all things exist, sub- 
sist and consist, they declare Him to be ^^un- 
knowable," and decline to speak His name. 
Mr. Spencer goes so far as to say : '^ The 
Pov/er which the universe manifests to us is 
utterly inscrutable " [First Principles, Chapter 
II, page 46] ; and Tyndall, in similar phrase, 
says: " The whole process of evolution is the 
manifestation of a Power absolutely inscruta- 
ble to the intellect of man." [Belfast Address.] 
And a few lines further on he declares : " We 



GOD REIGNS 107 



have the conception that all we see around us 
and all we feel within us — the phenomena of 
physical nature as well as those of the human 
mind — have their inscrutable roots in a cosmi- 
cal life, if I dare apply the term, an infinit- 
esimal span of which only is offered to the in- 
vestigation of Man." And in that investiga- 
tion Mr. Tyndall himself labors with loving 
ardor. Very well. The power which we call 
Gravity is also utterly inscrutable, except as 
^^ the universe manifests to us '* its existence 
by its effects. Are we to ignore that wide- 
reaching energy which operates without re- 
gard to time or space, because its nature is 
inscrutable and we are not yet able to deter- 
mine whether all known modes of energy do 
not arise as its correlations ? If not, then by 
far greater reason should we not pronounce as 
" unknowable '* and refuse ^^ to feel after " 
God, who ^' created the heavens and the 
earth." 

A few considerations as to the importance 
of understanding that Conscientiousness is not 
an intellectual power, having the function of 
knowmg, but only that of feeling, and this dis- 
course will be ended. 



io8 GOD REIGNS 



It is but too well known that under oppos- 
ing views of what was undoubtingly believed 
to be the teaching of conscience, the blood of 
opposing brethren has flowed in the conflict 
of ^^holy wars;" persecution for opinion's sake 
has planted the stake and fagot of supersti- 
tion; and all manner of wrong and outrage 
have been justified by appeals to conscience, 
under its honest but ignorant promptings. 
The history of Conscience in the progress of 
the race has been a sad and a humiliating one. 
But on the other hand, as mankind have risen 
to the fundamental truth that Conscientious- 
ness, great and momentous as is its true func- 
tion, is only a feeling, and void of all capacity 
to know, and requiring the guidance of the in- 
tellect, even as the lowest propensities do, it 
has risen to the very first importance in the 
social relations of enlightened nations. And 
when acting conjointly with the group of the 
religious sentiments also fully enlightened, it 
promises to be a chief factor in the elevation 
of the race to its highest happiness. 

Whether, as quoted from Mr. Spencer above, 
"■ Conscientiousness has in many (or any) out- 
grown that stage in which a compelling power 



GOD REIGNS 109 



is joined with rectitude of action," may be 
considered as very doubtful. The physiolog- 
ical law is, that all faculties and functions 
based in the nervous system, increase by use 
— by their proper exercise. It is therefore 
difficult to perceive how the feeling can be- 
come less by its appropriate exercise, even 
though its possessor ^^does the right thing 
with a simple feeling of satisfaction in doing 
it." But possibly the full meaning of this 
statement has not been apprehended, and has 
been sufficiently qualified by the accompany- 
ing statement " that with some of the funda- 
mental other-regarding duties, the sense of 
obligation " has retreated into the background 
of the mind,''' instead of fading out as moral 
actions become more pleasant. It is not very 
safe to differ from Mr. Spencer, whose depth 
and breadth of treatment of all the questions 
he discusses is the sufficient apology for re- 
ferring to him so often. 




GOD REIGNS 



SERMON VIII. 

" He that loveth not, knoweth not God ; for 
God is Love." — First Epistle of John iv, 8. 

Benevolence — Good-will — is the Sentiment 
to be next considered. 

In the present advanced condition of the 
race in civilized countries, it is, in its highest 
manifestation, an emotion not directly selfish, 
but is essentially a' desire for the welfare of 
others. But though not in itself demanding 
or even expecting any return, as does the emo- 
tion of Conscientiousness, its action is in 
itself accompanied with pleasure, and often 
with the highest happiness. 

Mr. Darwin, in The Descent of Man, has 
treated of this emotion together with the other 
moral sentiments, without discriminating with 
any care between them. He appears to think 
that the love of approbation was among the 
chief agencies in promoting its rise and evo- 
lution; but of the origin of the intellect (in 
which he appears to include the sentiments 



GOD REIGNS 



and feelings), he says: " In what manner the 
mental powers were first developed in the 
lowest organisms, is as hopeless an inquiry as 
how life first originated." [American Edition, 
page 35-] 

As an instance of Mr. Darwin's want of dis- 
crimination between the different moral senti- 
ments are these words on page 67 of above 
work: '' I fully subscribe to the judgment of 
those writers who maintain that of all the dif- 
ferences between man and the lower animals, 
the moral sense or conscience is by far the 
most important. This sense, as Mr. Mcintosh 
remarks, ^has a rightful supremacy over every 
other principle of human action;' it is summed 
up in that short but imperious word oicght^ so 
full of high significance. It is the most noble 
of all the attributes of man, leading him with- 
out a moment's hesitation to risk his life for 
that of a fellow creature." But it is quite cer- 
tain that Love — Benevolence — does not act 
under any sense of duty, or because it ought 
to: it is spontaneous in the presence of an ap- 
propriate object, and even sometimes acts in 
opposition to the promptings of conscience. 
But let it be noted that Mr. Darwin clearly 



GOD REIGNS 



places the moral sentiments of man above his 
reason, in a comparison with brutes. 

Mr. Spencer has also treated of the rise and 
evolution of Benevolence at length. But 
though he appears to discriminate between 
the emotions of Conscientiousness and Benev- 
olence — between Duty and Love,— he has 
generally grouped them under the general 
name of moral sentiments, though in their 
essential characters they are evidently quite 
distinct, demanding separate consideration. 

What is meant in this discourse, then, by 
Benevolence, is Love, that emotion so well 
portrayed by Paul to the Corinthians under 
the name of Charity, which in the New Ver- 
sion is rendered Love. Says the Apostle : 
" Love suffereth long and is kind; love envieth 
not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 
doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not 
its own, is not provoked, taketh not account 
of evil, rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but 
rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, be- 
lieveth all things, endureth all things. ^ * * 
Now abideth faith, hope, love, these three ; 
and the greatest of these is love." [First 
Corinthians xiii, 4-7, 13.] 



GOD REIGNS 113 



It will require but little close observation to 
find that it is necessary to discriminate be- 
tween this sentiment and that which prompts 
to justice, equity, duty and all emotions which 
are accompanied w^th the feeling that we 
ought to manifest them. Indeed — in the 
United States at least — justice appears to be 
declining, while benevolence has increased 
beyond example. Large numbers of persons 
no way noted for justice, are so generous, so 
given to good-will toward others, as to be 
noted for their emotional love for their fellow 
men. Even the notably dishonest, the vile, 
the law-breaker void of any strong sense of 
duty, will often be found to be spontaneously 
generous, kind and loving. They ma}^ '' steal 
from the rich and give to the poor;" they may 
acquire wealth by dishonest means, and ex- 
pend it in profuse charities from no motives 
but benevolence and the love of approbation. 
The whole land is filled with organizations of 
men, and of women, and of men and women 
combined, whose sole business it is to seek 
out and to relieve the suffering and the needy. 
But a fair acquaintance with the members of 
these associations will not show them to be 



114 



GOD REIGNS 



more just in their private relations than others. 
There has been no time in the history of civil- 
ization when governments, associations of citi- 
zens and private individuals were so active in 
relieving poverty, misfortune, sickness, famine, 
ignorance and all human ills, as now. If these 
do not readily present themselves, the pre- 
vailing feeling of benevolence prompts to sys- 
tematic search for them. Even crime is 
hardly a barrier to the expression of this sen- 
timent, and criminals are often unworthy re- 
cipients of spontaneous generosity from those 
who are not criminals. 

On the other hand, honesty, especially in 
trade, is almost a forgotten virtue. Our tables 
are supplied with ground cocoanut shells for 
pepper, sulphuric acid for vinegar, corn-meal 
and curcuma for mustard, beans, chicory and 
other adulterations for coffee, sloe leaves for 
tea; and a hundred other similar frauds. For 
a quart of strawberries we get a pint, with all 
the large ones on top ; other fruits are dis- 
guised by red gauze for the required ruddy 
hue, and blue gauze for grapes or plums which 
should look blue. Baking powders have alum 
for cream tartar, and horse-radish in bottles is 



GOD REIGNS 115 



half turnips, Candies are half terra alba, mo- 
lasses half corn syrup and butter half lard. 
Even the medicines upon which life depends 
for genuineness, are often not only adulter- 
ated, but are often wholly factitious. 

It will not be necessary to look at other de- 
partments of trade; they are nearly all much 
alike in this respect — only the counterfeit pre- 
sentment of what honest trade should be. Nor 
is this want of honesty confined to tradesmen: 
it has found its way into nearly every rank and 
degree of society, from the boy who sells pa- 
pers in the street upon a false cry of news to 
the minister who preaches another's sermon 
without giving just credit. 

Now, nobody believes that all these people 
who manifest so little sense of justice and hon- 
esty are equally deficient in benevolence. 
Many of them are overflowing with "the milk 
of human kindness," and their hearts and 
their purses are open to all appeals for sym- 
pathy, and their hands ready for good deeds 
toward their fellow men. 

But against all these, and further showing 
the essential difference between Conscientious- 
ness and Benevolence, we shall find men who 



ii6 GOD REIGNS 



are in all things scrupulously honest, but 
whose generosity is never manifested; men 
who ^^do justly" and, apparently, ^' walk hum- 
bly before God," but who never give proofs 
that they also love mercy." They may be con- 
scientious to a notable degree, but those who 
know them best, and admit this virtue, never 
ask their aid in any labor of love; never see 
their names on any list of kind-hearted citi- 
zens, acting for the relief of the suffering, and 
never complaining of their cold selfishness, 
saying: " They are honest, but they do noth- 
ing for charity's sake." Every observer must 
have known examples of this kind ; and they 
generally everlook the heartlessness in def- 
erence to the honesty. 

These considerations are enough to show 
that the Sentiments of Conscientiousness and 
Benevolence are not identical, and that the 
one may be strong and the other weak and 
rarely wakened in the same individual. 
Haeckel suggests — he does not advocate — 
that there is danger that the sentiment of be- 
nevolence may become too strong, and ought 
to be restrained ; and that the feeble, the dis- 
eased, the blind, the insane, ought to be 



GOD REIGNS 117 



abandoned to their fate, instead of building 
asylums for them and caring for them, lest 
the advancement of the race be interfered 
with ; and he cites the American Indians as 
examples of savage selfishness in the destruc- 
tion of feeble or diseased children. And even 
Mr. Spencer (Data of Ethics, Am. Ed., page 
189) says, in defence of similar but far less 
savage views : '^ Any arrangements which in 
a considerable degree prevent superiority from 
profiting by the rewards of superiority, or 
shield inferiority from the evils it entails — any 
arrangement which tends to make it as well to 
be inferior as to be superior, are arrangements 
diametrically opposed to the progress of or- 
ganization and the reaching of a higher life." 
And he adds that '' under its biological aspect 
this proposition cannot be contested by those 
who agree in the doctrine of Evolution; but 
probably they will not at once allow that the 
admission of it under its ethical aspect is 
equally unavoidable. While, as respects the 
development of life, the well-working of the 
universal principle described is sufficiently 
manifest, the well-working of it as respects the 



ii8 GOD REIGNS 



increase of happiness may not be seen at once. 
But the two cannot be disjoined." 

The same author appears to doubt the dis- 
interestedness of those who manifest appar- 
ently unselfish benevolence, and declares (p. 
199) that " d. society in which the most exalted 
principles of self-sacrifice for the benefit of 
neighbors are enunciated may be a society 
in which unscrupulous sacrifice of alien fellow- 
creatures is not only tolerant but applauded." 
If this refers to a State as a society, the state- 
ment may in many cases be true ; because 
there are many classes in a State, and the pub- 
lic rulers are not always benevolent, while 
many of its citizens may be so ; but it is 
hardly true that societies composed of private 
individuals united for professedly benevolent 
objects, can be justly charged with this gross 
inconsistency. And even were it otherwise, it 
does no more discredit to genuinely disinter- 
ested benevolence than do the offenses prac- 
ticed by tradesmen to justice and righteous- 
ness. 

In opposition to what appears to be the 
views of at least some of the Evolutionists, we 
shall hold that this God-like Sentiment of 



GOD REIGNS 119 



Love can never become excessive ; though be- 
ing an unreasoning emotion, and not having 
any mode of knowledge as its function, it de- 
mands the controUing and- directing super- 
vision of the reasoning powers. But Benevo- 
lence in the highest sense and in all its variety 
of manifestations must become the ruling 
emotion among men, or they cannot maintain 
their claim of great superiority over the 
brutes. If the race dies of brotherly-love it 
will be a glorious consummation, and extinc- 
tion will become the very acme of life. 

In Christianity and in all the higher forms 
of religious expression, Benevolence plays a 
ruling part among the group of the religious 
sentiments ; and it is that which has finally 
subdued superstition to so great an extent, 
acting under the guidance of a freer and more 
enlightened intellect. 

Did this divine Sentiment exist as '' the raw 
material " of Spencer, or as a " promise and 
potency" as an element of primeval matter 
where Professor Tyndall's backward vision 
discerned it ? or does it come directly from 
the loving God who is immanent in all mat- 
ter, unorganized as well as organized ? Let 



GOD REIGNS 



each answer for himself, according as his love 
abounds ; but, as we have seen, Mr. Darwin 
admits that the origin of the intellect and 
feelings '' is an inquiry as hopeless as how life 
originated; " and no Evolutionist pretends to 
tell exactly how intellect and feeling first 
arose, though they treat with confidence of 
the causes and processes of their evolution. 
And according to Professor Tyndall, '' it is no 
departure from scientific method to place be- 
hind natural phenomena a universal Father," 
though he denies that his existence has been 
proven. 

The office of this sentiment of Benevolence, 
like the underlying tendency of Evolution, is 
the common good, toward which and for 
which all evolution has proceeded. And that 
life exists that the living may enjoy it. Benev- 
olence is correlative with the very essence of 
organic evolution. That, and not reason is 
the mother of social life. Reason protects no 
offspring, constitutes no families, binds to- 
gether no tribes, erects no social organism. It 
wipes away no tears, holds up no hands of the 
weak or helpless, sympathises with no sorrow. 
It is simply a cold adjustment of sequences 



GOD REIGNS 



and consequences, heartless and unfeeling. 
But " Love seeketh not its own/' and "blessed 
are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy." 

There is found in the legislation of all na- 
tions another proof (not yet considered) that 
Conscientiousness and Benevolence are differ- 
ent in their nature. We have laws demand- 
ing that men shall be honest ; that the debtor 
"shall pay the uttermost farthing ;" that the 
thief, the forger, the burglar, the counter- 
feiter, the contract breaker, and all violators 
of justice shall be punished ; but no law com- 
mands men to be generous, charitable, loving 
and forbearing ; legislators are well aware 
that love of the neighbor cannot be had by 
compulsion, and that the charity which suffer- 
eth long, and is kind, envieth not, seeketh not 
its own, beareth all things, hopeth all things, en- 
dureth all things, cannot come by legislation. 
And he who has the legal right to demand his 
pound of flesh, can have no lawful demand for 
a single throb of loving kindness. 

It is true the law demands that we shall do 
no murder, and that we shall abstain from 
acts of violence and all injury to the person of 
another ; but it does not demand that this 



GOD REIGNS 



abstinence shall be accompanied with emotions 
of kindness \ it does not require that we 
should love our neighbor, but only that we 
shall do him no personal injury. 

It has been already indicated that the Sen- 
timent of Benevolence is intimately connected 
with the end toward which organic evolution 
tends : the happiness of the living. It has 
been shown that Herbert Spencer and other 
Evolutionists admit that the end for which 
evolution works is happiness, pleasure, satis- 
faction, or some mode or degree of sentient 
gratification ; Sixty years ago, Spurzheim (in 
the philosophical part of his work upon the 
brain), and after him Mr. George Combe, 
showed that all the faculties of man — of the 
body and of the mind — specifically relate 
to other faculties, functions, offices or ne- 
cessities of the organism, or to something in 
its environment, upon which its existence and 
welfare depend. The muscles relate to the 
parts which are to be moved ; the bones to 
the parts to be supported \ the heart, arteries 
and veins to the blood to be circulated ; the 
brain and nervous system to the various func- 
tions of voluntary motion, sensation, emotion, 



GOD REIGNS 



123 



reason, etc.; while each separate and specific 
mental faculty has some correlative with 
which it is related: Conscientiousness relates 
to justice; Idealty to the beautiful; Hope to 
anticipated good; Acquisitiveness to property. 
And in all these relations the faculties and 
their correlatives affect each other by inter- 
action proper to each. Now, it is evident that 
if happiness is the end toward which Evolu- 
tion has worked and is still working, man 
must himself not only present no obstacle to, 
but must become helpful toward, his own hap- 
piness by ministering to the happiness of 
others, and herein may be seen that Divine 
Love which is not only immanent in and 
works out through Evolution as its aim and 
end, the welfare and happiness of all sentient 
creatures; but by the same law raises up in 
man an emotion of love toward his fellow 
which ministers to that beneficent end, and 
which at the same time is filled with happi- 
ness in its own manifestation. So that love 
is co-ordinated with the happiness of others, 
while that happiness is reflected back to the 
loving heart which has manifested it. 

And it has come about that, as declared by 



124 GOD REIGNS 



the Apostle John: ^^He that loveth not, 
knoweth not God ;" for it is in the thread of 
evolving creation, with Love as its essence, 
and Happiness as its end, that the loving 
'' Father '^ (whose existence Tyndall declares 
has not been proven) is seen and felt and 
known by His loving children. 




GOD REIGNS 



125 



SERMON IX. 

" In thoughts from visions of the night, when 
deep sleep falleth on men, fear came upon me, 
andtrembhng. ^ ^ ^ Then a spirit passed 
before my face." — Job iv, 13-15. 

That specific emotion which Dr. Spurzheim 
called Marvelousness has been treated of 
under other names by many writers, and by 
Mr. Spencer at great length. Recalls it ^^The 
ghost theory." It is of this sentiment that J. 
Allanson Picton, in The Essential Nature of 
Religion, speaks in the following words : 
" Since mankind are so constituted that in one 
form or another this sense of an ultimate posi- 
tive mystery is, whether perceived or not, 
mixed up in all their thoughts, while it occa- 
sionally shows itself with portentous energy ; 
it is inevitable that attempts should be made 
to give practical expression to the feeling. 
And in such efforts we have the very first 
germs of religion." But this statement treats 
of the sentiment not in its earlier forms, but in 



126 GOD REIGNS 



that of advanced evolution. Mr. Spencer at- 
tempts to trace the feeling to its source, and 
has with much labor and ingenuity pointed 
out the supposed origin — or origins, for he 
cites many — of " the ghost theory." To avoid 
doing him injustice, it will be necessary to 
quote his views somewhat fully, which is done 
from an extended note appended to his Essay 
071 A7iimal Worship, After explaining his 
concurrence in certain views' of Professor 
Huxley — namely: "that the savage, conceiv- 
ing a corpse to be deserted by the active per- 
sonality who dwelt in it, conceiving this active 
personality to be still existing, and that his 
feelings and ideas concerning it form the basis 
of his superstition;" he adds : "Everywhere 
we find expressed or implied the belief that 
each person is double; and that when he dies 
his other self, whether remaining near at hand 
or gone far away may return, and continues 
capable of injuring his enemies and aiding his 
friends." Mr. Spencer appends the note re- 
ferred to, in which he recognizes the fact that 
Mr. Huxley's views show "the ghost theory" 
in an advanced state, without indicating its 
origin; and then attempts to fill "this wide 



GOD REIGNS 127 



gap in the argument " by indicating some of 
the means by which the ghost theory arose, as 
follows : 

1. It is not impossible that his shadow, 
following him everywhere, and moving as he 
moves, may have some small share in giving 
to the savage a vague idea of his duality. 

2. A much more decided suggestion of the 
same kind is likely to result from the reflec- 
tion of his face and figure in water, imitating 
him as it does in his form, colors, motions, 
grimaces. When we remember that not un- 
frequently a savage objects to have his por- 
trait taken, because he thinks whoever carries 
away a representation of him carries away 
some part of his being, will see how probable 
it is that he thinks his double in the water is 
a reality in some way belonging to him. 

3. Echoes must greatly tend to confirm 
the idea of dualty otherwise arrived at. In- 
capable as he is of understanding their natural 
origin, the primitive man necessarily ascribes 
them to living beings — beings who mock him 
and elude his search. 

4. The suggestions resulting from these 
and other physical phenomena are, however. 



128 GOD REIGNS 



secondary in importance. The root of this 
belief in another self lies in the experience of 
dreams. The distinction so easily made by 
us between our life in dreams and our real 
life, is one which the savage recognizes in but 
a vague way, and he cannot express even that 
distinction which he perceives. When he 
awakes, and to those who have seen him lying 
quietly asleep, describes where he has been 
and what he has done, his rude language fails 
to state the difference between seeing and 
dreaming that he saw, doing and dreaming 
that he did. From this inadequacy of his 
language it not only results that he cannot 
truly represent this difference to others, but 
also that he cannot truly represent it to him- 
self. Hence, in the absence of an alternative 
interpretation, his belief, and that of those to 
whom he tells his adventures, is that his other 
self has been away and came back when he 
awoke. And this belief, which we find among 
various existing savage tribes, we equally find 
in the traditions of early civilized races. 

5. The conception of another self capable 
of going away and returning, receives what to 
the savage must seem conclusive verifications 



GOD REIGNS 129 



from the abnormal suspensions of conscious- 
ness, that occasionally occur in members of 
his tribe. One who has fainted and cannot be 
immediately brought back to himself (note the 
significance of our own phrases, returning to 
himself, etc.) as a sleeper can, shows him a 
state in which the other self has been 
away for a time beyond recall. Still more is 
this prolonged absence of the other self shown 
him in cases of apoplexy, catalepsy and other 
forms of suspended animation. Here for 
hours the other self persists in remaining 
away, and on returning refuses to say where 
he has been. Further verification is afforded 
by every epileptic subject, into whose body, 
during the absence of the other self, some 
enemy has entered, for how else does it hap- 
pen that the other self on returning denies all 
knowledge of what his body has been doing ? 
And this supposition that the body has '^ been 
possessed " by some other being is confirmed 
by the phenomena of somnambulism and in- 
sanity. 

6. What, then, is the interpretation inevit- 
ably put upon death ? The other self has 
habitually returned after sleep, which simu- 



130 GOD REIGNS 



lates death. It has returned, too, after faint- 
ing, which simulates death much more. It has 
even returned after the rigid state of catalepsy, 
which simulates death very greatly. Will it 
not return also after this still more prolonged 
quiescence and rigidity ? Clearly it is quite 
possible — quite probable even. The dead 
man's other self is gone away for a long time, 
but it still exists somewhere, far or near, and 
may at any moment come back to do all he 
said he would do." 

This long quotation is interesting in several 
ways. It indicates by its language that ac- 
cording to the most eminent Evolutionists a 
belief in immortality arose very early among 
even the least advanced savages, and also that 
even so profound a philosopher as Spencer 
finds it difficult to give any special reason for 
its existence, but suggests several which he 
thinks have conspired to awaken that belief : 
I, men's shadows ; 2, their reflection in the 
water ; 3, echoes ; and 4, the most important 
of all, ^^the experience of dreams." But 
after stating all these Mr. Spencer adds — ap- 
parently feeling that more were needed— sus- 
pensions of consciousness from fainting. 



GOD REIGNS 



131 



apoplex}^, catalepsy, etc. These views are not 
cited for the purpose of opposing them ; for at 
some period in man's history and by some 
means or agency, the idea of spiritual existence 
(including that of immortality) has risen, and 
has become the germ of all religions contain- 
ing these elements. Mr. Spencer says [ Data 
of Ethics, § 18] referring to a certain school 
of morals : 

^^ It originates with the savage whose only 
restraint beyond fear of his fellowmen is fear of 
an ancestral spirit." And he and other Evo- 
lutionists consider this ghost theory as the 
germ of all religions. It is also admitted that 
a feeling is the basis of the theory ; but no 
sufficient attempt appears to have been made 
toward a discrimination between the blind 
Sentiment which feels and the knowing In- 
tellect which theorizes. Marvelousness is 
simply an emotion, and like Conscientiousness, 
Benevolence, Veneration and all special sen- 
timents, there must be a correlative to which 
it is specially related. Now, what is it that 
awakened the "ghost theory "which is ad- 
mittedly the germ of all religions ? Is it the 
shadow cast by the sun, the face reflected in 



132 GOD REIGNS 



the water ; echoes coming back from a hill- 
side, or dreams which arise ^^ in thoughts 
from visions of the night," as when a spirit 
passed before the face of Job ? As the feel- 
ing of the marvelous, the mysterious, the 
ghostly, has not only been the the source of 
all superstition, but, as admitted by the Evo- 
lutionists, of the religions of all civilized peo- 
ples, it cannot be '^ a departure from scientific 
method " to assume that spiritual exisience 
and immortality are the true correlatives of 
this early-awakened and wide-spread emotion 
among men. Something real — not merely im- 
aginary — relates to and is correlated with this 
Sentiment, which has had a wider influence 
both for evil and for good than any other. 
And if the views of Mr. Spencer and others as 
to the manner in which the ghost theory first 
arose and has since been evolved in the re- 
ligions of the most advanced nations are the 
true ones, let it be remembered that justice 
and benevolence arose in a similar manner 
from lower and more savage sentiments. 
And as Paul said to the Galatians, '' the law 
was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ," 
so have been all forms of superstition, including 



GOD REIGNS 133 



worship of ancestors, our schoolmaster to 
bring us unto God. Consciousness of God 
appears to be^ the end to which this emotion 
of Marvelousness has been tending from its 
first rudiments among men, too little above 
brutes, to have any reasonable conception* 
higher than that of some dread mystery, up to 
him who declared that God is Love. 

But let us distinguish between the emotion 
and the various theories based upon it. The- 
ories are matters of the intellect, and men 
naturally differ in their ghost theories as much 
as they differ as to the emotion which prompts 
to do justice or any other. The impulse to do 
justly, differing only in degree, is the same in 
all ; but the determination of what is just 
under any given state of facts is a matter of 
reason, about which men have always dif- 
fered. So there can be no such thing as the 
ghost theory, although as high an authority as 
Mr. Herbert Spencer alludes to it with the 
definite article. There are great numbers of 
ghost theories; even Mr. Spencer has one of 
his own, when he speaks of ^^the Power which 
the universe manifests to usy Professor Tyn- 
dall had one when he saw by his backward 



134 GOD REIGNS 



vision in the original nebula " the promise and 
potency of every form and quality of life." 
Even in its lowest form of an unreasoning 
(and ineradicable) superstitious response to 
the mysterious, the marvelous and the un- 
known, it is common still among most intelli- 
gent people. Mr. Picton, in the essay already 
referred to, says: " If a man can really think 
that the glory of the universe is explicable on 
the hypothesis of little indestructible and 
eternally dancing points of matter, which have 
no deeper reality within or beyond them; then, 
certainly, religion is in that man an incon- 
gruity, but it does not follow that he will be 
wholly destitute of it. For I do not for a mo- 
ment believe that any man can think any such 
unthinkable absurdity. He may think that 
he thinks it; but that is all. What he really 
means is that there is no further explanation 
possible^ however much it may be needed; and 
therefore he calls his atoms the ultimate ex- 
planation of the world. But that does not 
hinder him from many a moment of reverie, in 
which he recognizes in the universe some 
nameless Unity that awes his spirit to a silent 
worship." 



GOD REIGNS 135 



To this Sentiment of Marvelousness is very 
closely allied — especially among cultivated 
people — that of Veneration or Reverence, 
which in its highest expression becomes wor- 
ship. On the hypothesis of Evolution, it 
probably arose out of the former; and both 
sentiments are elements in all advanced 
phases of religious emotion. Mr. Spencer 
supposes it to have taken the form at an early 
period of the worship of ancestors, among 
many if not all races. In his essay on TJie 
Origi7i of Animal Worship he says: ^^The 
rudimentary form of all religions is the pro- 
pitiation of dead ancestors, who are supposed 
to be still existing and to be capable of work- 
ing good or evil to their descendants." And 
in the same essay he says : " The desire to 
propitiate the other self of the dead ancestor 
displayed among savage tribes, dominantly 
manifested by the old historic races, by the 
Peruvians and Mexicans, by the Chinese at 
the present time, and to a considerable degree 
by ourselves ( for what else is the wish to do 
that which a lately deceased parent was known 
to have desired ? ) has been the universal first 
form of religious belief ; and from it have 



136 GOD REIGNS 



grown up the many divergent beliefs that have 
been referred to.'* 

Now, although there is some dissent among 
teachers of science as to the rise and line of 
evolution of the religious sentiments, it is evi- 
dent that among eminent Evolutionists it is 
held that the sentiment distinctively known as 
Marvelousness — however it arose — has been 
the basis of all forms of the " ghost theory/' 
and that all more recent manifestations of re- 
ligious feeling and modes of worship have 
grown out of these. We have seen that ac- 
cording to the views of Evolutionists as well 
as others before the rise of the new science, 
Marvelousness and Veneration must have 
their correlatives to which they bear special 
relation, beyond the shadows, echoes and 
dreams which may have first awakened them. 
And we have seen that the indications all 
point to the worship of one God as the end to 
which all evolution has been tending. 

At this point it becomes necessary to make 
a distinction which is too frequently neglected; 
a distinction between religion and theology. 
Religion pertains to the emotions, which feel, 
but do not think ; theology to the intellect. 



GOD REIGNS 137 



where all doctrines, religious as well as others, 
have their rise. Strictly, there can be but one 
religion; while there are theologies without 
number. Of course it is not denied that with 
cultivated people religion must necessarily go 
hand-in-hand with some form of doctrine — 
some theological beliefs — without which the 
blind religious emotions would be as aimless 
and void of useful results as would be the 
blind feeling which impels to justice, without 
intelligent guidance. 

The common habit of confounding religion 
with theology makes it difficult to give any 
satisfactory definition of religion. A defini- 
tion offered by Mr. Picton, in the essay before 
cited, is: '' Following the suggestion of great 
teachers, but carefully avoiding the snare into 
which some have fallen, of confounding relig- 
ion with philosophy on the one hand, or with 
morality, on the other, we may define religion 
as being* in its essential nature an endeavor 
after a practical expression of man's conscious 
relation to the Infinite. * * >{« p^ \ ask is 
that the phrase, ^ conscious relation to the In- 
finite,' may be accepted as including every 
stage in the development of this conscious- 



138 GOD REIGNS 



ness, just as the name of a plant includes the 
germinating blade as well as the fruit-bearing 
maturity. This being granted, what consti- 
tutes religion is not the intellectual formula- 
tion of that consciousness; for this is properly 
the work of philosophy. But religion aims 
rather at expression in the language of the 
heart.'' 

These definitions, good as far as they go, 
do not go far enough in distinguishing be- 
tween the religious feelings and '' an endeavor 
after a practical expression " of these feelings 
in acts of worship, or otherwise. Religious 
emotion is one thing ; its '' practical expres- 
sion" is another. But it is enough for the 
purpose of these discourses to have shown (as 
is believed) that religion in its two chief ele- 
ments of worship of God and a consciousness 
of immortality, has been shown by leading 
Evolutionists to have arisen early in the his- 
tory of the human race, and grown with the 
growth of the Intellectual Powers, from low 
beginnings into its present manifestation 
among the most enlightened peoples. 

It is not in accordance v/ith the object of 
these discourses to examine any form of 



GOD REIGNS 139 



theology. Religion and theology will survive 
all changes in scientific doctrine, because they 
are based in fundamental elements of human 
character. Professor Le Seur (in Popidar 
Science Monthly for May, 1887) says on this 
point : " Evolution is simply the current 
form of scientific opinion ; we adhere to it be- 
cause it seems to be the truth. Religion is 
that instinct in man which leads him to rec- 
ognize and worship that which is highest and 
best. Far, then, from our submission to the 
truth cutting us off from religion, it should, 
and it will, bring religion nearer to us, and en- 
able us some day to place it upon imper- 
ishable foundations, and to make it the 
abiding concentration of all thought and 
effort." 

That the religious sentiments minister to the 
happiness of the race follows from the law of 
betterment admitted by the Evolutionists. 
Had they been more injurious than useful, 
they, and the races which held them in highest 
degree must have disappeared, and others 
with less religion must have survived them. 
But the contrary has been the fact in the his- 
tory of the races, and those which have been 



I40 GOD REIGNS 



most deeply religious have always been in the 
advance, other things being equal. And this 
has been true even without regard to the ex- 
cellence or the want of it in the dominant 
party. For the religious feelings when they 
become intense kindle the ardor of all others, 
and make men brave, aggressive, and devoted 
to what is believed to be the divine cause, 
and generally successful against their less re- 
ligious or fanatical enemies. Let us be thank- 
ful that ours is an age when the religious sen- 
timents are more nearly emancipated from 
unmeaning Superstition than ever before, and 
our lot cast in a land where they are abso- 
lutely free to follow the teachings of the most 
enlightened intellect. 

It is curious to note how, under this condi- 
tion of unrestricted freedom, men are segre- 
gated from the mass who hold certain theo- 
logical views in common, and are aggregated 
into separate congregations almost as nu- 
merous as unlimited divergence of views 
can demand. And the close observer will 
find that after making due allowance for 
the influence of early impressions, grades of 
"' respectability" and a few other disturbing 



GOD REIGNS 141 



agencies, people are drawn into church 
relations by peculiarity of temperament, 
race, inheritance and other personal traits. 
So fully is this true that we can, in many 
cases, distinguish the sect with which 
men and women affiliate by knowing their 
personal peculiarities. One class goes to 
church A. They are calm, dignified, self- 
regarding, and generally well-to-do people, 
with questions of faith and conscience all set- 
tled. Another class belongs to church B. 
They permit no questions of conscience or 
creed, for both have been settled for them be- 
fore they were born. They never neglect the 
mint and cummin, and walk by faith in their 
leaders. Class C is robust of mind, full of 
strong emotion, and not disposed to hide its 
expression ; they are not deficient in faith, 
but are also disposed to work their passage to 
a Promised Land, and are ready to take 
everybody else with them. And so we might 
go through the alphabet of church aggrega- 
tions, and not half exhaust the well marked 
varieties. But this is found to be held in com- 
mon by nearly all of them : that Benevolence 
holds chief place among religious virtues ; 



142 GOD REIGNS 



and that ^^ freedom to worship God" accord- 
ing to the dictates of individual conscience is 
the only assurance of heartfelt religion. 




GOD REIGNS 143 



SERMON X. 

'' I am fearfully and wonderfully made." — 
Psalms cxxxix, 14. 

Having in previous discourses attempted to 
show by the direct method that God reigns 
over, within and though the whole realm of 
nature, it is now proposed to proceed to the 
same end by the opposite road, especially as 
to the origin of man, and to find what was the 
work to be achieved by Evolution on the 
hypothesis of no God. In doing this it will 
not be assumed that Tyndall, Huxley, Spencer, 
Darwin, or any of the leading English Evolu- 
tionists hold Godless private opinions; though 
thousands of their followers in America not 
only hold that the universe exists without God, 
but they suppose themselves to be justified in 
so believing by the teachings of the authors 
named. Not so, however, with the eminent 
German author of the History of Creation, If 
the English translation of this really great 



144 GOD REIGNS 



work does Professor Haeckel no injustice, he 
teaches that man has been evolved by me- 
chanical causes alone, under the influence of 
natural forces, without purpose, design, inten- 
tion, or any guidance from any agency in the 
nature of intelligence. Starting from this 
assumption then, and for brevity's sake per- 
sonifying Evolution, let us see what she un- 
dertook to do and what she has accomplished 
in the mechanical creation of man. 

Starting with a speck of animated gelaton 
which came into existence no one knows how, 
and was the first of living things no one knows 
why, the problem was to make man of the 
dust of the earth — of such materials as she 
found ready at hand^ — and to fill him with the 
breath of life and all its concomitants. 

Man was to stand upright. His framework 
was therefore necessarily rigid, tough and un- 
yielding. Evolution made it of bone and made 
the bone. But bones were heavy and cum- 
bersome ; and so they were made hollow — 
putting the least material into the strongest 
form. They were also for equilibrium's sake 
made with bi-lateral symetry — right and left 
sides complementarily alike. And as bone is 



GOD REIGNS 



145 



unyielding, and as the man was to have both 
motion and loco-motion, flexible joints were 
required at a hundred points. Evolution 
made all the joints ; some hinge-like ; some 
ball-and-socket; some (like the radius) rolling 
axially in grooves, and at every joint Evolu- 
tion provided sacks of lubricating liquid to 
prevent friction, and saw to it that the sacks 
should carefully be kept full. 

This bony skeleton was to be for support, 
for motion and loco-motion, and for the pro- 
tection of tender parts. The brain and its 
appendages were to be safely housed in a 
bony cranium and down the central axis of 
the frame; accordingly the skull was made a 
hollow globe, arched on all sides, and its ap- 
pended cord of nerve centre sent down the 
back in a cavity hollowed in the bony spine, 
while the spine itself, which contained and 
protected this precious cord, was carefully 
padded between all its many joints with elas- 
tic cartilages, to permit flexion and to prevent 
any violent shock which might work injury ; 
and still further to secure this end, the bony 
column was given a double curvature, by 
which it might bend, and so lessen all shocks 



146 



GOD REIGNS 



by its elasticity. And Evolution surveyed 
her work at this point, and saw that it was 
good. 

But the eyes, and the ears, and all the spe- 
cial senses were to be in the cranium of un- 
yielding bone ; and provision must be made 
for turning the head about without turning 
the whole body. Evolution — solely by me- 
chanical means, without intending to do an}^ 
such thing — provided a small opening in an 
upper vertebra of the spinal column, and 
fitted a pivot of bone into it for the revolu- 
tion of the head, enabling it to revolve more 
perfectly than if design had wrought the me- 
chanism by the hands of the most skillful 
artisan. 

The next problem was — how this impris- 
oned brain and spinal m.arrow were to send 
their nerves out over the body, and to receive 
others in return. Here Evolution also worked 
much as an intelligent engineer would have 
done : she bored holes — foramins, anatomists 
call them — all down the spine for the passage 
of the nerves outward and inward ; and she 
did a similar work for the cranium, making a 
foraminal passage wherever it was needed 



I 



GOD REIGNS 



147 



for a nerve or a blood vessel to go out or in ; 
and she carefully made the foramins at the 
most convenient points. But all this was 
easy work — provided that Evolution had been 
permitted to think ; any carpenter could have 
done as much. She was to work without 
thought, and the next work on the skeleton, 
though still mechanical, was less the work of 
the carpenter and more that of the engineer. 
From the structure of the frame its move- 
ments were to be achieved at a loss of power, 
and the bony levers were to be moved by 
muscles acting nearer to the fulcrum than to 
the point of resistance. Evolution accord- 
ingly roughened the bones at numerous points 
for the better attachment of muscles, and 
threw out projecting spurs, protuberances and 
trochanters like those at the top of the thigh 
bones, the better to counteract the long end 
of the levers. If we were only permitted to 
attribute thought to Evolution, her skill in 
these contrivances which were not contrived, 
would appear wonderful. But it was all the 
mechanical result of blind forces. 

The skeleton was also to furnish the frame- 
work of a pair of bellows, to supply the lungs 



GOD REIGNS 



with the breath of life: that wonderful mechan- 
ism called the chest was constructed, with all 
its hinges, braces and movable ribs; and no 
work of any skilled human inventor oper- 
ates as well as that which came without in- 
vention. 

And then the food grinding apparatus ; a 
movable lower jaw so attached by hinges to a 
fixed upper one as to permit both a grinding 
movement from side to side, and a cutting 
movement up and down. There were also to 
be teeth, both cutters and grinders, and 
sockets were made in the jaws for these, and 
the cutting teeth inserted where least power 
was needed, and the grinders further back, as 
a wise workman would have planted them. 
But the teeth themselves really appear to 
have required some thought. Being from 
their structure incapable of increase in size 
after being once formed, and as those of child- 
hood were too small for adult life. Evolution 
— equal to all emergencies — made two sets ; 
one for childhood and the other to come later in 
life; even — as if knowing what would happen 
— preparing the second set at the roots of the 
first before these have completed their service. 



GOD REIGNS 149 



But the skeleton was not yet complete. 
There must be an orifice on each side of the 
head where phonic vibrations of the air might 
be conveyed to the brain within, there to 
awaken the sensation of sound. Evolution 
made the orifices; and then she placed within 
the bony cavity of the ear a series of small, 
delicate^ and wonderfully appropriate com- 
pound levers of bone, to multiply the force of 
the vibratians. And all this without thought 
or any semblance of contrivance : it was only 
blind force finding its way at points of least 
resistance. It happened, curiously enough, 
that the work of making the "human ma- 
chine " with two-sided symetry required two 
ears instead of one ; which turned out very 
fortunately, as not only are we able to hear 
from either side, but if one ear is destroyed 
there may be a chance of hearing with the 
other. 

The eyes were also to be provided for; and 
as they were to be globular, like a planet, and 
free to revolve, an orbit was formed for them 
under the projecting brow, for safety sake; 
and a small opening was made in the skull at 
the hinder part of the orbit to allow the 



I50 GOD REIGNS 



passage of the optic nerve. These orbits are 
indeed remarkable uncontrived contrivances j 
but in this they are so far behind the eyes, 
which they were made for, that Evolution gets 
comparatively little credit for the sockets. 

The organ of smell was also to be provided 
for; and this was by no means the least of the 
works undertaken and accomplished by Evo- 
lution. Not the external nose — that is simple 
enough — but the plan for spreading out a net- 
work of sensitive membrane in a very limited 
area. Imagine a fine sponge to have a deli- 
cate membrane spread out over its entire sur- 
face and lining all its tubes and cavities ; that 
is what Evolution did for the ^^ spongy bones," 
and as the air we breathe carries odorous par- 
ticles through the channels of these spongy 
bones, and into contact with the sensitive 
membrane the sense of smell arises. And this 
was Evolution's work. 

But we have already consumed half the 
space allowed to the skeleton, and are not 
half through with its wonders of mechanism — 
its braces, pullies, flexures, arches, cavities, 
cylinders and all that delicate internal struct- 
ure of the bones known as their histogeny. 



GOD REIGNS 



151 



We have not considered the relations of the 
parts. But when it is remembered that Sir 
Charles Bell consumed an entire volume in 
treating of the structure and mechanism of 
the hand alone, it will be seen that the struct- 
ures and adaptations of the entire body can- 
not even be enumerated in a single brief dis- 
course. 

And all this was the work of Evolution act- 
ing without intelligence on a living speck of 
gelatin ! And if it is said — as justice de- 
mands — that Evolution has done nothing but 
recount the history of progression from the 
amoeba to the man, then unconscious forces 
with the aid only of variation, survival of the 
fittest and heredity have evolved the human 
microcosm. 

Is there any middle ground between this 
doctrine of evolution by unconscious physical 
forces acting mechanically, and that which 
assumes the immanency of Conscious Intelli- 
gence at work in all phenomena ? Mr. J. J. 
Murphy, in his work on Habit and l7ztelligence, 
appears to think there is. He asserts his full 
belief in Evolution (which he calls develop- 
ment), but declares his belief ^^ that some of 



152 



GOD REIGNS 



the simplest structures belonging to the veg- 
etable system have probably been produced 
by the action of inorganic forces upon the 
organism, and that muscular structure may 
possibly, though not probably, have been pro- 
duced by the action of the organism itself in re- 
sponse to impressions from without. Of course 
these two factors are always both present, 
though acting in very enequal proportions in 
different cases. But there are structures for 
the origin of which it is, 1 believe," he con- 
tinues, ^^impossible to account by any such 
merely physical theory, and which can only 
be referred to an organizing intelligence. I 
refer to such organs as the eye and the ear. 
If it is certain, as I think it is, that the flow of 
nutritive fluids through cellular tissue, for suc- 
cessive generations, must have a tendency to 
form a rudimentary circulating apparatus, it 
is at least equally obvious that the action of 
light falling on the eye for any number of gen- 
erations can have no similar tendency to pro- 
duce the optical apparatus of the eye." [Vol. 

T. p. 305]- 

Now it would appear that one who is ready 
to admit as Mr. Murphy jioes, that he thinks 



GOD REIGNS 153 



it certain "• the flow of the nutritive fluids 
through cellular tissue for successive genera- 
tions, must have a tendency to form a rudi- 
mentary circulating apparatus/' and that the 
wonderful mechanism of the heart and ar- 
teries, veins and capillaries, arose in that 
way, should find no difiiculty in admitting a 
similar origin to the eye. But Mr. Murphy 
thinks the eye was rather too much for the 
natural forces acting mechanically, and he 
falls back on what he calls " organizing intelli- 
gence " to account for the perfect eye. The 
Evolutionists point to the fact that the eye 
commenced as a mere spot of black paint, as 
in the eye of '' the fish called the lancet (am- 
phioxus), which is so simple" (as Darwin 
says ) " that it consists only of a fold-like sack 
of skin, lined v/ith pigment and furnished with 
a nerve, but destitute of any other apparatus, 
being merely covered by transparent mem- 
brane," and from that passed by mechanical 
forces through variation, survival of the 
fittest and heredity up to the eye of man. 
But Mr. Murphy replies that '' no such merely 
physical theory will account for the origin 
of the special complexities of the visual 



154 GOD REIGNS 



apparatus." " Neither the action of light on 
the eye/' he continues, "nor the action of the 
eye itself can have the slightest tendency to 
produce the wonderfully complex histological 
structure of the retina, nor to form the trans- 
parent humors of the eye into lenzes ; nor to 
produce the deposit of black pigment which 
absorbs the stray rays which would otherwise 
hinder clear vision ; nor to produce the iris, 
and endow it with the power of partly closing 
under a strong light so to protect the retina, 
and expanding again when the light is with- 
drawn ; nor to give the iris its two nervous 
connections, of which one has its root in 
the sympathetic ganglia, and causes expan- 
sion, while the other has its root in the brain, 
and causes contraction." Nevertheless, he 
thinks what he calls " unconscious intelligence'^ 
sufficient for even all this ! 

It is not to be understood that Mr. Murphy 
denies, or doubts, or even ignores the exist- 
ence of a conscious God, for he does not ; but 
how such an admission is compatible with the 
doctrine of " unconscious organizing intelli- 
gence " does not appear. He declares that 
"formative or organizing intelligence is an 



GOD REIGNS 155 



ultimate, inexplicable fact not capable of be- 
ing resolved into any other.'* :k * * 
'^Those who agree with me that the complexi- 
ties of such organs as the eye and ear are due 
to unconscious intelligence, will probably feel 
no difficulty in believing the same of such 
wonderful motor instincts as the cell-building 
power of the bee and the wasp. [Vol, 11, p. i]. 

Now, after having declared that those com- 
plex organs and instincts are due to a '' forma- 
tive organizing intelligence," which '^is an 
ultimate, inexplicable fact," why should Mr. 
Murphy add that this " fact " ^^is not resolva- 
ble into any other," when he himself admits 
the being of God ? the only ultimate cause. 
Let us hope that the time is not far distant 
when men of science will no longer hesitate to 
admit in their writings (as most of them do in 
their hearts) that God reigns, the source, and 
sum, and substance of all science. 

Rev. Canon Fremantle in an article pub- 
lished in the Fortnightly Review, quotes St. 
Augustine as saying: ^^ God is unspeakable j 
yet what we say of Him would not be spoken 
at all if it were unspeakable. Even when we 
say God is unspeakable, we hardly speak 



156 GOD REIGNS 



rightly ; for even in saying this we make an 
assertion. By pronouncing the word Deus, 
we do not make him known as He is. Only 
when that sound strikes the ears of men who 
know Latin, it moves in them the thought of 
a certain most excellent and immortal nature." 
[See PoptUar Science Monthly, June, 1887.] 

What was it then which moved Herbert 
Spencer to invent the word agnostic as a name 
for those who do not admit Revelation, and 
believe that nothing can be known of God ; 
and why is it thought necessary to avoid all 
mention of his name in nearly all recent works 
of science ? Writers who do this do not hesi- 
tate to speak of gravity, or of the " universal 
ether," or of force and energy, of none of 
which is anything known, except their effects. 
Can it be sufficient reason for this agnosticism 
that the name of God ( and of innumerable 
gods) has been the rallying cry of all religions 
and of all superstitions, even the most de- 
graded ? Hardly, The word ;;^<2//^r has been 
subject to almost as great abuse as the name 
of God. Matter has been decried as vile, 
gross, dead and hateful; ^^a clog upon the 
soul;" and the material body as a ^prison- 



GOD REIGNS 157 



house, barring us from a better world," even 
by those who should know better. But 
scientific writers do not esteem matter as de- 
graded thereby and hence decline to speak of 
it; but make that and its changes the burden 
of their thoughts. And yet they do not pre- 
tend to comprehend it. And even Mr. Spencer 
declares that " physical science is as little 
atheistic as it is materialistic." Canon Fre- 
mantle, in the paper already referred to, quotes 
Mr. Spencer as saying in the Fortnightly Re- 
view : '' The student of Nature who starts 
from the axiom of the universality of the law 
of causation, cannot refuse to admit an eternal 
existence ; if he admits the conservation of 
energy, he cannot deny the possibility of an 
eternal energy ; if he admits the existence of 
immaterial phenomena in the form of con- 
sciousness, he must admit the possibility at 
any rate of an eternal series of such phenom- 
ena; and, if his studies have not been barren 
of the best fruit of the investigation of Na- 
ture, he will have enough sense to see that 
when Spinoza says, ^ Per Deum intelligo ens 
absolute infinitum, hoc est substantiam con- 
stantem infinitis attributis,' t^ie God so 



158 GOD REIGNS 



conceived is one that only a very great fool 
indeed would deny, even in his heart. Physical 
science is as little atheistic as it is mater- 
ialistic." 

If this be so — and certainly it is — might it 
not be well for this great thinker to devote a 
few pages now and then to the demonstration 
of the great truth that " physical science is as 
little atheistic as it is materialistic?" It would 
not be lost upon the thousands of non-scien- 
tific readers in this country who study his 
works and who believe that he teaches the 
contrary. Perhaps it is not too much to say 
that all Mr. Spencer's philosophy lacks of 
being the most complete and profound which 
has appeared among men, is the name of 
God. 




GOD REIGNS 



159 



SERMON XI. 

^' There is none other God but one ; for 
though there be gods, that are called gods, 
whether in heaven or in earth (as there be 
gods many and lords many), but to us there 
is but one God, the Father, of whom are all 
things." — I Cor., VIII, 4-6. 

The hypothesis of Evolution includes the 
following propositions, which will be the basis 
of discussion in the present discourse : 

1. In the struggle for existence among 
plants and animals, the most favorably en- 
dowed in organic forms and functions survive, 
while the less fitted and unfitted ones perish. 

2. In those variations in forms and func- 
tions which occur from whatever cause, use- 
ful ones beneficial to individuals and to asso- 
ciated members, tend to endure, and to in- 
crease from exercise ; while injurious or use- 
less ones decline or become extinct. 

These propositions are true of man, as of 



i6o GOD REIGNS 



animals and plants ; and held by all leading 
Evolutionists, and are fundamental. 

Mr. Darwin says: '^ The new and im- 
proved forms of life tend to supplant the old 
and unimproved forms." \^Origin of Species, 
§ 512]. '^We have every reason to believe 
that parent forms are generally supplanted 
and extinguished by their improved offspring.." 
[ Id., p. 304]. ^^The theory of natural selec- 
tion is grounded on the belief that each new 
variety, and ultimately each new species, is 
produced and maintained by having some ad- 
vantage over those with which it comes in 
competition, and the consequent extinction of " 
less favored forms almost inevitably follows." 
[Id., § 571.] Natural selection acts solely by 
the preservation of useful modifications [Id., 
§ 756] \ but we learn from the study of our 
domestic productions that the disuse of parts 
leads to their reduced size; and that the re- 
sult is inherited." [Id., § 770.] 

^' And as natural selection works solely by 
and for the good of each being, all corporeal 
and mental endowments will tend to progress 
towards perfection." [Id., § 823.] And in his 
preface to the Second edition of the Descent 



GOD REIGNS i6i 



of Man, Mr. Darwin says: ^^ I may take this 
opportunit}^ of remarking that my critics fre- 
quently assume that I attribute all changes of 
corporeal structure and mental power exclu- 
sively to the natural selection of such varia- 
tions as are often called spontaneous; whereas, 
even in the first edition of the ' Origin of 
Species/ I distinctly stated that great weight 
must be attributed to the inherited effects of 
use and disuse, with respect to both the body 
and the mind." And in the sixth edition of 
the same work, as pointed out by Mr. Spencer 
in almost his latest work, entitled, " Factors 
of Organic Evolution," Mr. Darwin says : ^' I 
think there can be no doubt that use in our 
domestic animals has strengthened and en- 
larged certain parts, and disuse diminished 
them; and that such modifications are inher- 
ited." Returning to his work of the Descent 
of Man, Mr. Darwin says : " Changed struct- 
ures which are in no way beneficial, cannot be 
kept uniform through natural selection, though 
the injurious will be thus eliminated. ' [§ 92.] 
'^ Owing to this struggle (for existence), varia- 
tions, however slight and from whatever cause 
proceeding, if they be in any degree profitable 



i62 GOD REIGNS 



to the individuals of a species in their in- 
finitely complex relations to other organic 
beings and to their physical conditions of 
life, will tend to the preservation of such 
individuals, and will generally be inherited by 
the offspring." [§ 84.] ^^ We may feel sure 
that any variation in the least degree injurious 
would be rigidly destroyed." [§ 109.] 

And so throughout the writings of Mr. 
Darwin it is held that useful organic forms 
and functions tend to be preserved, while in- 
jurious ones decline and tend to become ex- 
tinct. And it is believed that no other Evo- 
lutionist has expressed dissent from these 
views. 

Speaking specially of the intellectual pow- 
ers, Mr. Darwin says : '' These faculties are 
variable, and we have every reason to believe 
that the variations tend to be inherited," 
\_ Descent ofMaii^% 210] and Mr. Spencer 
has taken pains to show that the brain and in- 
tellectual powers and emotions are subject to 
the same laws as the bodily structure and 
functions : these are preserved when useful, 
and when injurious disappear. And Mr. 
Darwin declares that the religious feelings 



GOD REIGNS 163 



have ministered to the advancement of the 
lower races, and their higher morahty, in ac- 
cordance with the same laws. [ Descent of 
Man, § 251]. 

One remark from Mr. Spencer as to the 
evolution of structures and functions together, 
will conclude these citations from eminent 
Evolutionists as to the propositions assumed 
at the beginning of this discourse. " We 
have become quite familiar," he says, ^^with 
the idea of an evolution of structures through- 
out the ascending types of animals. To a 
considerable degree we have become familiar 
with the thought that an evolution of func- 
tions has gone on pari passu with the evolu- 
tion of structures." \^Data of Ethics^ § 3.] 
And a large portion of Mr. Spencer's later 
work, " The Factoids of Organic Evolution,^' 
is devoted to demonstration of '' the doctrine 
that not only in the individual^ but in the suc- 
cessions of individuals, use and disuse of parts 
produce respectively increase and decrease of 
them." 

Now the history of the human race shows 
nothing more clearly than that the ^^ ghost 
theory," (as Mr. Spencer calls it) and some 



164 GOD REIGNS 



form of the religious sentiment has been com- 
mon to mankind in all countries, at all stages 
of progress, from the lowest savagism and the 
vilest fetichism to the most enlightened peo- 
ples and the most exalted religious sentiment 
to be found at the present day. 

Dr. Fritze Schultze, in his exhaustive his- 
tory of the rise, prevalence and evolution of 
fetichism, defines it as follows : 

'^ By fetichism we understand the religious 
veneration of material objects. If such ob- 
jects are to be worshipped they must first of 
all appear to be worthy of veneration, or, in 
other words, the worshipper must so consider 
them, The fetich, however, e. g., a piece of 
metal, still continues to be in external form 
and in essential constitution, the self-same 
thing, whether observed by an European or 
an African. Hence, that which renders it a 
fetich is nothing intrinsic to the thing itself, 
but the view the fetichist takes of it. If, 
therefore we would understand fetichism in 
its true nature, we must investigate the sav- 
age's mode of apprehending the objects, or in 
other words, we must study the intellectual 
status of the fetichist. Fetichism has an 



GOD REIGNS 165 



historical position in all nations which stand 
lowest in intellectual development, that is, 
among savages so called. [Translated by J. 
Fitzgerald, p. 3]. 

By means of the accounts of travellers, 
memoirs of residence among savage races, 
narratives of missionaries and residents among 
rude tribes, and the published results of ob- 
servation by many writers covering almost all 
tribes of rude, savage and barbarous people, 
he has shown the universal prevalence of 
fetichism in great variety among different 
tribes, and its essential agreement everywhere 
in being based on a conception of what Mr. 
Spencer calls '' the ghost theor}^," the origin 
of which he accounts for as shown in a pre- 
vious discourse. 

Here, then, is the case of a trait of human 
character which originated in the very night 
and darkness of the race, became organized 
in the brain, and has been transmitted by in- 
heritance through many generations, rising 
through all forms of fetichism, ancestor-wor- 
ship, sun-worship, and all the phases of poly- 
theism to the highest conception of the most 
advanced believers in that ^^one God, the 



1 66 GOD REIGNS 



Father/' of whom Paul wrote to the Corin- 
thians. Nor does it detract at all from this 
high conception to remember through what 
by-ways of superstition men have reached an 
upper plane of religious faith and feeling ; for 
the moral sentiments of justice, benevolence, 
truthfulness and all the elements of a pure 
morality have come up in the same way by 
slow advances from very low beginnings. Is 
religion in itself, then, devoid of theological 
doctrines, unworthy the consideration of Evo- 
lutionists, that they should disregard it in 
their laborious researches into the evolution 
of the race ? And if it be evil, why, then, has 
it not long ago perished from the earth, in ac- 
cordance with the declared laws of Evolution? 
Why have tribes and peoples with deepest re- 
ligious impulses been ^^ selected " to survive? 
No other strong trait can be shown to have 
begun earlier, been more nearly universal, 
and persisted in the structure of the brain 
as a constantly manifested function than the 
religious feelings. Must not that be good for 
the race which has survived so long ? If it 
were not, the fundamental laws of Evolution 
should have exterminated it long ago. 



GOD REIGNS 167 



Professor Le Sueur, one of the foremost of 
American Evolutionists, takes note of this sur- 
vival of the religious " instinct " (as he calls 
it), and in Popular Science Monthly for May, 
1887, says: ^^ Evolution is simply the current 
form of scientific opinion. We adhere to it 
because it seems to be the truth. Religion is 
that instinct in man which leads him to recog- 
nize and worship that which is highest and 
best. Far, then, from our submission to the 
truth cutting us off from religion, it should and 
it will, bring religion nearer to us, and make 
us some da}^ to place it upon imperishable 
foundations, and to make it the abiding conse- 
cration of all thought and effort." [Page 39.] 

It may be asked: Why should it have been 
necessary for those religious sentiments which 
now play so important a part in the nature of 
man and bring him into conscious relation to 
the Father-God as conceived by the most ex- 
alted minds, to have begun in such base 
superstitions as the thousand forms of feti- 
chism, and to have passed through mental 
darkness and bloody rites, up to that concep- 
tion and life which were manifested in Jesus 
of Nazareth? The question is perfectly per- 



1 68 GOD REIGNS 



tinent. But it involves that other and broader 
question: Why did civiHzed and enlightened 
man start as an ignorant savage? Even now, 
in this exalted age which exultantly looks 
down on forty centuries of comparative ignor- 
ance, how few have an enlightened conception 
of what Mr. Spencer was pleased to charac- 
terize as " the ghost theory?" Evolutionists, 
at least, cannot complain of the long ages of 
advancement which have been necessary to 
bring men to such a conception of that ^^ the- 
ory" as shall lead them to do justly, and to 
love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. 

The ghost theory must have involved the 
greatest usefulness to the race, to have sur- 
vived its long night of savagery and barbar- 
ism to the present time. Moreover, the " re- 
ligious instinct," as Professor Le Sueur calls 
it, has swayed mankind as a ruling impulse in 
his passage from savagery to civilization as 
no other has. And if "no race has been 
lifted out of barbarism without the aid of 
supernatural machinery," as declared by Mr. 
Burroughs, in a paper entitled " The Natural 
versus the Supernatural" \_Foptilar Science 
Monthly, May, 1887], it follows that it must 



GOD REIGNS 169 



have constantly worked out the welfare of the 
race; for all injurious organic forms and func- 
tions — in the brain as elsewhere — perish. The 
religious sentiments — the functional mani- 
festations of organic forms in the brains of a 
thousand generations — have survived all 
^^ struggle for existence," and so proved their 
value to mankind; and it cannot be presump- 
tions to assume that they will survive the 
neglect of agnosticism, the direct attacks of 
atheism and the indirect assaults of exclusive 
materialism. But in making this declaration 
it is no more necessary to define this persist- 
ent element of human character by some 
specific theological dogma than it was that 
Mr. Spencer, in his work on the Data of 
Ethics, should have formulated a code of 
morals. If the ethical sentiments and prac- 
tices which prevail among the most highly ad- 
vanced persons of the present day arose from 
such barbarous beginnings as shown by Mr. 
Spencer, and have passed upward through ages 
of evolution; and if at each stage of progress 
the prevailing ethics was that best suited to 
its people, there can be no reason to doubt 
that the successively prevailing religious sen- 



I70 GOD REIGNS 



timents and rites of every age and people have 
been — all things considered — the best. And 
it only remains for some devout Evolutionist 
to do for religion what Mr. Spencer has done 
for ethics. 

The conclusion will no doubt be that men 
in a state of barbarism were no more able to 
conceive and be moved by the highest relig- 
ious motives than by the highest ethics. 
Even Jesus, the exemplar for all mankind, 
said to his special followers at one time : ''■ I 
have yet many things to say unto you, but ye 
cannot bear them now." [John xvi, 12.] And 
at various other times he intimated to his 
disciples that they were not yet able to bear 
the whole truth. His apostle, Paul, said to 
the Corinthians : " I have fed you with milk 
and not meat ; for hitherto ye were not able 
to bear it ; neither yet now are ye able, for ye 
are yet carnal." [ i Cor., iii, 2-3.] And while 
religion pertains to the emotions and affec- 
tions, which are blind and do not reason, and 
have grown up as feelings, all theologies, 
which belong to the reasoning powers, but are 
equally with the feelings manifested through 
the brain, must necessarily have also had their 



GOD REIGNS 



171 



rise in gross intellectual darkness in the in- 
fancy of the race, and have come up through 
much tribulation to their highest expression. 

It is not forgotten that religion and morality 
are so intimately related as to be frequently 
confounded and treated as one ; but while re- 
ligion involves ^^that instinct in man which 
leads him to recognize and worship that 
which is highest and best/' morality is more 
properly confined to man's relations with his 
fellow man. And both, if either, have risen 
by slow variations from a very low to a much 
higher degree of usefulness and excellence. 

It is not to be supposed that Evolutionists 
have overlooked the momentous part which 
the religious feelings have played in the his- 
tory of mankind. Why, then, have they so 
generally failed to give them due attention ? 
Is it not that agnosticism has become a creed 
among the chief expounders of the new phi- 
losophy, and they therefore decline to treat of 
what is or may be known, because they do 
not know more ? But creeds in science are at 
least as hurtful as they are sometimes in re- 
ligion. Professor Huxley, in his address at 
the unveiling of a statue of Darwin, declared 



172 GOD REIGNS 



that " science commits suicide when it adopts 
a creed." But the agnosticism which declares 
that nothing can be known of God is as truly 
a creed, though a negation, as any positive 
declaration of theology. Moreover, it is a 
creed which has, comparatively speaking, but 
few earnest followers. Let it be admitted 
that scientific research can determine nothing 
as to the existence and attributes of God be- 
yond their manifestations in the phenomena 
of the universe. The same is true of gravita- 
tion and all force and energy, of the universal 
ether, of self-consciousness, and of other 
things, to the study of which agnosticism of- 
fers no bar. And even if nothing at all can 
be known of God, none know better than Mr. 
Spencer and the Evolutionists that man in all 
stages of his advancement has been swayed 
by that ghost theory which includes both 
spirit existence and immortality beyond tem- 
poral death. That is therefore as worthy of 
the profound study of scientific observers as 
is biology, sociology or ethics. And if there 
is nothing spiritual or immaterial to which the 
ghost theory bears relation ; if Evolution has 
organized a lie in the human brain which has 



GOD REIGNS 173 



survived through all generations, then the 
Evolutionist who shall demonstrate that will 
have written his name high up in the temple 
of science, and may henceforth rest upon his 
laurels. 




174 GOD REIGNS 



SERMON XII. 

^^He that built all things is God."— He- 
brews III, 4. 

To any one who has followed these dis- 
courses it is hardly necessary to say that the 
chief object in them has been to support the 
declaration of Professor Tyndall, that " it is 
no departure from scientific method to place 
behind natitral phenome^ta a tmiversal Father, 
who, in answer to the prayers of His children, 
alters the currents of those phe7tomena.''^ Never 
theless, it has not been attempted to show that 
the universal Father ever does '^ alter the cur- 
rents " of natural phenomena; but that being 
immanent — in-dwelling — -in all things and with 
perfect knowledge without having to reason 
in search of it, there can be no possible neces- 
sity at any time to make any change in the 
currents of natural phenomena. 

In supporting this proposition almost ex- 
clusive consideration has been given to that 



GOD REIGNS 



175 



wide-reaching philosophy of modern days 
which bears the name of Evolution ; because 
that hypothesis as now understood compre- 
hends the whole range of phenomena appre- 
ciable to the human consciousness. If God 
be excluded from evolution, there can be no 
place for him in all his boundless universe. 

Nor has the truth of the doctrine as taught 
by its ablest expounders been directly ques- 
tioned. Evolution is a fact as well ascer- 
tained as gravitation \ but what is its extent 
and what are its limitations remain to be de- 
termined by evolutionists themselves. But all 
indications from the imperfections in the doc- 
trine as taught by the most advanced Evolu- 
tionists, and many avowals made by them, 
tend to prove that it can never be complete 
until God shall be restored as the conscious 
center and bond of unity for the whole system 
of philosophy. It is not claimed by its teach- 
ers \hat Evolution is either itself a force or 
the sum of many forces ; but only that it is a 
scientific account of those phenomena by 
which matter has reached the present condi- 
tion of the material universe, and especially 
of that portion which we know as organic. 



176 GOD REIGNS 



Since the previous discourses of this series 
were prepared, there has come to hand a re- 
markable lecture upon the same subject, from 
which a few paragraphs will be cited as show- 
ing how one of America's ablest naturalists 
and Evolutionists — Professor E. D. Cope — 
looks upon the philosophy which ignores the 
existence of God, and teaches that organiza- 
tion is the cause of life and consciousness. 
Speaking of the difficulty of treating the 
question scientifically, Professor Cope says 
that ^' this difficulty is increased by the fact 
that a majority of scientific men avoid the 
subject • * >i^ >i^ and they either look for 
light to the future exclusively, or they avoid 
it altogether, or treat it v/ith considerable in- 
hospitality, to say the least." [ Theology and 
Evolution \ Arnold & Co., Philadelphia, p. 4.] 
Of consciousness he declares that '' it is not 
only entirely distinct in its essential nature 
from matter, but it is also totally distinct from 
energy and motion. The whole universe and 
all phenomena in it are expressed in the three 
words. Matter, tridimentional, is the basis. 
Energy is the motion of that matter. Thirdly, 
consciousness is the mind which some of that 



GOD REIGNS 177 



matter exhibits. These are three totally in- 
dependent, distinct, uncommingleable, abso- 
lutely and essentially different subjects of 
thought." [P. 17.] ''If we go back to the 
very simplest animal, a drop of jelly known as 
the amoeba, we find that these very small be- 
ings display some mental qualities in a rudi- 
mental condition without any structure at all 
worth mentioning ; so it is evident that con- 
sciousness was there first, and the structure 
came afterwards, through activity." [P. 24.] 
Professor Cope then proceeds to show that in 
the evolution of animal forms, up to the high- 
est evolution, was in the activity of the animals 
from their own volition ; every act was a de- 
signed act, "and their own design runs through 
them all." ''We get from this history," he 
says, "further proof of the control of mind 
over matter ; for the capacity of animals or 
living things to create their own organs, in 
accordance with their own immediate neces- 
sities, and thus to enable themselves to acquire 
their modes of life as we find them today, is 
clearly an evidence of this power. Thus 
science proves that mind is the creator of or- 
ganisms, under the conditions furnished by 



lyS GOD REIGNS 



the environment. This is the first step in ev- 
idence of the existence of a great mind, since 
the lesser minds must have been derived 
from some common source like the structures 
which display them." [ P. 25.] 

And after a pretty full consideration of the 
whole matter, he declares as to the scientific 
evidence for the existence of God as follows : 
" The demonstration of the primitive function 
of mind, so far as it has gone, must be of the 
greatest possible interest and the greatest 
possible service to persons who perceive its 
wide bearing. There are some persons who 
do not care for that sort of demonstration. 
Perhaps they are happy. I would not inter- 
fere with the happiness of that man who is 
satisfied without the privilege of knowing the 
truth. For my own part I have occasion to 
be extremely grateful that I live in a time 
when the evidence for such truth is accessible. 
Although some parts of the argument have 
not -been unknown to some of the best theo- 
logians — it has not been in such shape as to 
constitute a demonstration, nor in a state to 
be acceptable to science ; it has been made 
provable and nothing more. But when it 



GOD REIGNS 179 



comes to take the form of an absolute propo- 
sition with certain demonstration, we have 
done what Job said could not be done, namely, 
by searching we have found out God. Job's 
expression is very correct, provided it means 
that you connot touch, see or handle the Su- 
preme Being by searching with the ordinary 
senses of the body. And this is a rational 
way in which we may apprehend his Being 
and believe in Him; and the consequences of 
such understanding must be to increase our 
belief in the stability of the universe, and in 
our own chances of a future life." [Page 28.] 

There are certain facts of organic evolution 
which are not accounted for in the hypothesis 
of Mr. Darwin, or of other Evolutionists. 
Some of these are : 

I. From the very beginning, as before in- 
dicated, it has been impossible to account for 
those '' few simple living forms," from which 
all living organisms since are claimed to have 
sprung. They could not have arisen sponta- 
neously ; that implies the rise of the living 
from the not-living, without a reason for it ; 
though Professor Haeckel and others believe 
that we are compelled by the logic of Evolu- 



i8o COD REIGNS 



tion to make that assumption. They ca,nnot 
be claimed to have arisen fortuitously, for this 
is contrary to established scientific principles. 
Moreover, the specks of " protoplasm/' in 
which life first " arose " have not themselves 
been accounted for. '• How was the first pro- 
toplasm created?" asks Professor Cope [page 
25]. "We have seen that plants manufacture 
protoplasm and other organic substances out 
of inorganic matter. % % ^. g^j^j; proto- 
plasm is necessary to the process. Whence, 
then, was the first protoplasm derived ?" 
[Page 26.] 

2. No sufficient reason has been shown for 
that uniform tendency to improvement and 
the rise to a condition of betterment, which is 
seen in both inorganic, and especially in or- 
ganic nature. In truth, there is no reason at 
all shown by evolution without God, why there 
should be an organized universe, and why 
there should be any evolution in it, 

3. Those "variations " of the organism by 
which " the fittest survive" in the struggle for 
existence, remain to be accounted for. " And 
these useful variations fortuitously arising," as 
Mr. Spencer calls them in his latest work — 



GOD REIGNS 



^'Factors of Orga7iic Evolution'^ [P^g^ 37] — 
which are inheritable, come in opposition to 
the law of inheritance according to which the 
offspring should be like the progenitors. And 
of this very thing Mr. Spencer says in the 
same work: '' Supposing all to agree that from 
the beginning, along with inheritance of use- 
ful variations fortuitously arising, there has 
been inheritance of effects produced by use and 
disuse; do there remain no classes of organic 
phenomena unaccounted for ? To this ques- 
tion I think it must be replied that there do 
remain classes of phenomena unaccounted 
for." [Page 37,] Where, then, is the real 
source of these organic phenomena which 
^^ remain unaccounted for?" As a suggestion 
of the answer to this inquiry, read the closing 
paragraph of Professor Cope's lecture, before 
quoted from : 

^^The evidence which sustains a belief in a 
great Mind now invisible to us, and in a pos- 
sible future life, is based on the knowledge 
that we possess of the control of mind over 
matter. This is derived from three sources : 
First, from the design displayed by the energy 
of living things; second, from the control by 



i82 . GOD REIGNS 



living over chemical energy; third, from the 
directive power of mind over the process of 
Evolution. 

4. Evolution does not account for the hap- 
piness to which it tends in the advancement 
of all animal organisms. Mr. Spencer's ex- 
planation is not sufficient. He says: " Pains 
are the correlatives of actions injurious to the 
organism, while pleasures are the correlatives 
of actions conducive to its welfare;" since '' it 
is an inevitable deduction from the hypothesis 
of Evolution that the races of sentient crea- 
tures could have come into existence under 
no other conditions.'' \Principles of Psychol- 
ogy ^ §124.] This only states a fact (if it 
be a fact), but does not account for it. Why 
does the economy of animate existence 
demand that it must result in happiness, or 
must not exist at all? And why must it exist 
at all, if there be no loving Father-God, '' that 
built all things ?" It might possibly be 
shown that — given matter and force — a solar 
system and an inorganic world must have 
come into existence. But even Evolutionists 
will scarcely claim that races of animated 
creatures conditioned upon their happiness 



GOD REIGNS 183 



must necessarily have peopled that world. 

As to the deficiencies of the doctrine of 
Evolution as it now stands, Mr. Spencer 
closes a discussion of them by saying : 
^^ Whatever may be thought of the argu- 
ments and conclusions set forth in this article 
and the preceding one, they will perhaps serve 
to show that it is as yet far too soon to close 
the inquiry concerning the causes of organic 
Evolution." [ Factors of Oi^ganic Evolution^ 
1886, p. 75.] 

Mr. Spencer is right \ '' it is far too soon to 
close the inquiry." It will not be safe to as- 
sume that it is closed until it has been con- 
sidered that God reigns in Evolution as he is 
supreme in the universe. 

A brief summary of the points sought to be 
established in these discourses will bring them 
to a close. 

For necessity, in making quotations and re- 
ferring to the language of others, the Vv^ord 
^^ spirit" has been used. But it is not as- 
sumed ( nor denied ) that it is something 
"supernatural ; " or that it is "an intelligence 
conceived of apart from any physical organi- 
zation or embodiment." That involves a 



1 84 GOD REIGNS 



subordinate question to be settled by itself. 

In the same manner the word " supernat- 
tcraP' has been avoided as involving another 
subordinate question. Professor Cope pre- 
fers the word " supersensuous/' which, as 
he says, ^^some people call the supernatural, 
:{c >K * because all is in accordance with 
our system of laws, which we call natural 
laws." 

In accordance with the views maintained 
in these discourses, all is natural or all is 
supernatural \ God is alike in all and over all. 
And it is consistent to hold that the same 
body of laws (speaking figuratively) holds 
good throughout all worlds. And of those 
laws, and of that which we personify as Na- 
ture, wherein the so-called laws are mani- 
fested, Mr. Darwin has this to say : " I have 
also often personified the word nature, but I 
mean by nature only the aggregate action and 
product of many natural laws — and by laws 
only the ascertained sequence of events." 
[ Animals and Plants Under Domestication, 
Introduction, p. 6.] Let us go one step fur- 
ther back, and call that which Mr. Darwin 
here calls " the ascertained sequence of 



GOD REIGNS 185 



events " the manifestations to our conscious- 
ness of that infinite Consciousness, the cause 
of all phenomena, '^ who built all things/' 

But though God through phenomena be- 
comes manifest to our consciousness, it must 
be under the same restrictions and in the same 
manner in which we are conscious of the ma- 
terial world, and of that all we can know is 
its effect upon, consciousness itself. Of what 
matter is '' in itself *' we can know nothing. But 
the same must be true of all that is near and 
dear to us — wife, children and friends, and the 
loving and beloved who are the objects of 
those strong affections which warm and vivify 
all our social relations. And in the same 
manner the devout worshipper is moved by a 
profound consciousness of that loving Father 
who, as the apostle declares, is not far from 
each one of us ; standing not apart from his 
works and surveying as at a distance the phe- 
nomena which he commands, but everywhere 
present in loving kindness to care for His con- 
scious creatures ; not permitting the universe 
to move as an infinite machine from its own 
mechanism, but at all times controlling its 
phenomena by the counsels of his own will ; 



1 86 GOD REIGNS 



issuing no " laws " for the government of ma- 
terial things, but exerting his own volition in 
infinite wisdom at all times ; permitting no 
^^ catastrophies " to befall his works, but con- 
trolling all apparent discord to compel a uni- 
versal harmony — that is the thought of God 
which arises in the consciousness and finds a 
devout response in every sufficiently intelli- 
gent being who has not preferred darkness 
rather than light. 

And now, does it not appear that any other 
conclusion would involve an anti-climax so 
prodigious as to convict that Nature which 
could be supposed to exist without God of in- 
finite folly? Setting out in the puerile ignor- 
ance of primeval man, the outcome of count- 
less ages of organic evolution, shadows, 
echoes, images and dreams awaken the won- 
dering savage with the ghost theory. Long 
ages of evolution through innumerable and 
indescribable fetichisms elevate mankind 
through ancestor-worship, star-worship and 
sun-worship — through lords many and gods 
many — to a dim conception of that one God 
whose essence is Love ; when lo ! Evolution 
abandons its greatest work, ignores God, and 



GOD REIGNS 187 



self-convicted of infinite folly, sinks to an ab- 
surd anti-climax. And if not that, at least de- 
clines to follow to the end for the long-sought 
consummation to which all change and all ad- 



vancement have tended. 




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